


Everyone in Town's Mighty Scared, What With All the Gold and the Outlaws

by easyforpauline



Series: an early name used for videophones [6]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Anal Fingering, Anal Fisting, Banter, Begging, Biting, Blow Jobs, Committing to the Bit, Crying, Cuddling & Snuggling, Dirt & Mud & Eating Dirt & Mud, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub, Domestic, Established Relationship, Extended death threat/kidnapping/attempted murder roleplay (specifics in notes), Face Slapping, Fluff and Humor, Gunplay, Hair-pulling, Hand Jobs, Humiliation, Impact Play, Kneeling, M/M, Manhandling, Mild Mindfuck, Mouth Fisting, Objectification, Oral Sex Performed on Inanimate Object, Outdoor Sex, Pinching, Pool & Billiards, Praise Kink, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Rimming, Scratching, Spit Kink, Stone Top Steve & Smother-Me-With-a-Pillow Princess Bucky, Vacation, Wrestling, crawling, forced exercise, improvised gags
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-09
Updated: 2017-09-09
Packaged: 2018-12-25 14:08:01
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 90,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12037497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/easyforpauline/pseuds/easyforpauline
Summary: He settles his weight firmly on Steve’s chest now, and stretches his legs out behind him, feeling perversely, joyfully pesky like a fly in love with a fly swatter. A fly in love with the zapping light hung on the porch. Its warm glow. How it protects its home and everyone inside.(Bucky and Steve: 1. Are both justifiably paranoid people 2. Have a lot of weird sex about it 3. Go on vacation)





	1. the tenor with the broken voice

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Thank you, Hannah Montana, for anything contained with that can be traced back to your influence. Your continued emotional investment in my #art is unspeakable levels of appreciated.
> 
> 2\. For a detailed (spoilery) explanation of the death threat/kidnapping/attempted murder roleplay, see work's end notes. My not at all detailed or spoilery explanation is, "I know it sounds hardcore, but it's fluffy and goofy, I promise (the blanket disclaimer for this entire series, tbh)!" 
> 
> 3\. This got very out of hand--I thought I was almost done two months and 60,000 words ago--and I'm the only person who looks at my shit before posting, so while I tried to tag and warn thoroughly on this, it's very possible that I fucked that up; if you do notice some massive oversight on my part re: tagging/warning, sorry about that & please feel free to let me know.

They’re listening to NPR on the cathedral-style radio on the kitchen counter. Bakelite, almost old as they are, bought practically for all the limbs Bucky’s got left, from a sketchy-seeming Ebay seller who was only sort of scamming him. He received the radio all right, authentic as anything, but it wasn’t in the kind of working condition advertised.

Which was fine. He got intimate with it, spent a week devoting most of his free time to mucking around in its insides while Steve watched and asked questions and occasionally flicked him in the face, pretending to be bored. “You know,” Bucky said, “This is a gift to you,” and Steve said, “I know. That’s why I’m being so sweet to you,” and leaned in to bite his neck.

All the groceries are away, and the guy on the radio’s saying, _So what you want to do is slow down, and you would do that by getting into the lowest gear you can get into,_ and Steve’s hands are in Bucky’s back pockets, squeezing his ass as they kiss, and he backs Bucky into the hall. Despite how graceful they both should be, it’s a clumsy operation. Bucky has to hip-check a chair out of the way; their calves knock into each other; Steve kicks Bucky in the ankle and not even on purpose like usual.

Bucky laughs into Steve’s mouth, tightening his hands on Steve’s shoulders. Scratching gently at a shoulder blade beneath thin t-shirt fabric. “Gonna trip me,” he mutters, and Steve kisses him next to his mouth instead of on it.

“Yeah? Maybe I should, you know. You chucked the cereal at my head.”

“I was aiming for your hands, I swear.” Steve was on cabinet duty, Bucky on the icebox, and they tossed stuff to each other from their respective shopping bags. The Honey Nut Cheerios from Bucky’s reusable floral tote smacked Steve full in the face.

“That so?” In the hall now, Steve pivots and pushes Bucky against the wall, just to the side of the kitchen doorway. Steve kisses his jaw and says, close to the skin, “I’m gonna say that sounds like bullshit.”

“How do you reckon?”

“You haven’t got many good qualities, sure.” Gripping Bucky’s ass harder to make him gasp breathily, Steve pulls his head back. He smiles, and his eyes linger on Bucky’s mouth. “But a little bird told me you do know how to aim.”

“Aw, gee, he did? Tell Sam I think he has some okay qualities too.”

“Uh-huh. Right.”

These jeans are tight, so the extended slithering grope when Steve pulls his hands out of the pockets is unavoidable. Immediately, Bucky misses them. He makes a barely-there low noise in his throat.

Steve smooths a thumb over Bucky’s eyebrow. “That how you’re playing it?”

Bucky forces his eyes wide, and tries to come off as saccharine when he says, “Play what? So nice of your friend to compliment my abysmal aim like that. Only right of me to lie to him too.”

Laughing, Steve says, “Oh, fuck you,” and takes Bucky by the arms and spins them around, manhandling him down, until Steve’s leaning against the wall and Bucky’s on his knees, looking up at him, one of Steve’s hands heavy, possessive, on the top of his head.

From the radio: _Hey that was a great question, and get rid of that stupid dog. Gonna get you killed on the freeway._

Bucky says, “Couldn’t even make it to the living room?”

“You don’t deserve nice hardwood floors. It’s this gross-ass carpet for you, and I won’t hear any bitching.” His hand slides up to the crown of Bucky’s skull, probably frizzing loose hairs. He pushes down hard, angling him, baring Bucky’s throat to potential attack or kiss. Chin pointed almost to the ceiling, he wonders if Steve’s looking down his nostrils and contemplating how fundamentally gross he is.

“No bitching,” he agrees, and grins and bites his lip. Feeling stupid, he uses the long pause to morse-code blink, _Love you_.

Steve looks like something embarrassing’s about to start seeping out of his face and he hasn’t read the instruction manual on how to prevent that. He hooks his finger through a few strands of the hair going into Bucky’s ponytail, fucking it up, and says “It’s mutual. And I’m not even sure you deserve to be as tall as you are right now.”

“Oh?”

“I think you should be lying on the carpet. Don’t you think?”

“Do I—”

“—think?” Warmth suffuses his face at his own predictability, how easy it is for Steve to intercept his joke. “Yeah, I heard myself. You don’t think. My mistake. Thought you were someone else.”

“Yeah? There someone else you’ve regularly got on his knees in front of you?”

“Well.” Steve sighs, and bends down, keeping his hand where it is. He kisses Bucky’s forehead.

His lips linger. This time, Bucky says it aloud, “Love you. Really.”

Lizard-like, Steve sticks his tongue out to press wetly against Bucky’s skin, then straightens up. “It’s still mutual. Really. Someone’s sappy today. And not lying down like I told him to.”

“You didn’t _tell_ me,” but he separates himself from Steve’s hand on his head to press his cheek to the nubby, debris-thick carpet. Legs on top of each other and bent a bit at the knees. They should really get one of those robot vacuum cleaners. Expand their family. He curls his body around Steve’s filthy spectator boot.

“Don’t correct me.”

“Sorry. But you didn’t tell me who the other guy on his knees is either.” 

“I didn’t mention? I hired an assistant off Craigslist to tie my laces when they come loose. His name’s Horace, and I’ve been keeping him a secret to protect him from that palpable miasma of failure that goes everywhere you go.”

Bucky laughs. “Oh, that’s good. Real kind of you, but you shouldn’t have to bother. What do you pay ’im? I’d do it for half that.”

“You’d do it for nothing.” 

“Wouldn’t I? It’s ’cause I know my value. Is the job mine?”

“All right. You’re hired.” The boot closest to Bucky’s face taps its toe. “Untie and tie them again. I want to know I made an all right hire.”

“Yeah, fuck Horace. I’ve got you covered, baby.”

Steve complains, “I’ll believe you when you do it,” but Bucky’s already doing it, shifting his head into the crook of his elbow so his forearm’s got more mobility. His brachial pulse beats against his cheekbone. Steve’s laces look delicate even beneath flesh-and-bone fingers, and he treats them accordingly, despite the urge to put his teeth around them, make them snap.

Then Steve could force him to eat the pieces, holding Bucky’s face in his hands as he fed them down his throat one at a time to teach him a lesson. Live mice disappearing in a snake’s maw. And Bucky would be tamed and penned-in when he’d been feral moments before.

Gazing at Steve’s shoe this close up produces kind of the same effect. After all, it’s staring back at him unblinkingly the same way Steve’s eyes would. His head’s heavy on his own arm, the left arm balletically graceful in the air, almost disconnected from him as he collects the now-limp laces and loops and knots them together. He’s a clunky machine forced to be small and precise.

“Did it,” he says into the hush between them. He rubs his right pointer finger over the rubber trim along the sole, and it’s like all of him sways forward into the smoothness, into Steve.

Steve says, “You did. Horace is packing his things,” but doesn’t do anything else. Not audibly, and not visibly from the mid-shins down.

The radio says, _Don’t drive like my brother. Don’t drive like my brother—_

Bucky hums, and they’re both being so immaterial, and he wants to—

He pushes up the cuff of Steve’s khakis, then gets his teeth around his ankle, in its sports sock, and bites. Hard, though the fabric must muffle it.

Steve hisses and flinches, but doesn’t kick him or anything like Bucky pictured. He technically knew that was a pipe dream; they’ve already had the, “No, I’m not gonna break your nose, and stop whining about it; you think I want nose blood on me?” conversation.

Steve might not have Bucky’s killer reflex control, but he comes close.

He does bend at the waist and grab Bucky by his tied-back hair, lifting his head off the ground enough to strain his neck. At first, Bucky tightens his core muscles to hold himself up and relieve the strain, but the reminder of his own strength is unappealing. Appealing: lax muscles, like he’s got a weak body, doughy all the way through. A kind of body he’s never had, really, the kind that seems luxurious. His head’s held in the air only by the heavy hand gripping his ponytail in its yellow scrunchie. Very painful. Very good.

Steve examines him dispassionately. Blinks once in a way that looks purposeful. Then squats down, relieving some of the ache in Bucky’s neck but replacing it with a solid, sweet sting when he switches hands on the ponytail and smacks his upturned cheek.

“No. Bad.” He shakes Bucky like he’s got him in his teeth before lowering him almost all the way to the floor. Bucky exhales and smiles. Steve’s mouth is a tight line, but his eyes are wide, eyebrows raised. So it’s not rhetorical, then, when he asks, “What’s up, Buck? What do you want from me right now, huh? Going and biting me? Throwing shit at me? It seems like you must want something.” He strokes Bucky’s cheek, warming it more, and gives him the lightest slap, a reminder, hand staying there like it’s trapping the slap.

Bucky turns his head to kiss the rough pad of fat beneath Steve’s little finger.

Steve’s smiling, shoulders relaxed, but he shifts his hand so it can’t obscure Bucky’s mouth. Can’t act as an excuse not to answer. “You might wanna use your words. Or I’m gonna have to guess.”

“What would you guess first?”

They could make a game of it. When Steve guesses wrong, Bucky will buzz loudly, but not until after Steve has done whatever it is. Bruised and battered and buzzing while Steve gets more and more frustrated, trying to win purely on principle. The game itself will obviously be a first place prize for both of them no matter whether Steve ever guesses right.

There won’t be anything _to_ guess right. The only thing Bucky can think to want right now is whatever happens to come next. Whatever animal instinct kicks in.

“Well, I haven’t guessed yet, have I?” Steve reminds him. “That’s the backup plan.”

“Okay. So guess and tell me.”

“No.” He draws the word out this time. “Bad.” The grip on his hair disappears and Bucky’s head drops all the way to the carpet. A whole inch down, with a tiny thud. “You know _what’s_ bad?”

“Is it my godawful mouth?”

“Wow _,_ what a guess.” He straddles Bucky’s hips, a hand on each shoulder, pinning him. It’s a great, looming view of Steve’s face, too far away to kiss, close enough to fill his field of vision so all he knows is Steve’s stupid nose; his big teeth; his pretty, incredulous eyes.

“You know what color your eyes are?” Bucky asks, struck, and Steve looks thrown. off.

“What? No, Buck. I live a strict life of asceticism and I’ve never once gazed upon a mirror. The Lord forbids me such vanity, and I would hate ever so to defy him.” He purses his lips. “It says on my driver’s license.”

“The license doesn’t even spell the whole word out and you think it answers what I’m gonna tell ya? Come on, please. It’s good. You wanna hear this.” 

“I’m in the middle of scolding you, you know.”

“Yeah, but I’m gonna forget if I don’t say it now. Plus, you get to be harsher for the interruption. Everybody wins.”

“Fine. What color are my eyes, smartass?”

“Cyanosis-blue. Deoxygenated. Do you know why?”

Steve pauses and squints like he’s trying to spot the ten differences between two pictures.

“No, uh. The fuck are you talking about, Buck? ’Cause I’m a corpse?”

“Too warm and loud to be a corpse. It’s ’cause you leave me breathless.”

“That—” Steve inhales slowly. “My eyes have no oxygen because _you’re_ breathless? I can’t have hurt you enough to damage your logic centers that much! I’ve barely done anything.”

“What? So it doesn’t—” He makes air quotes—“’make sense.’ What, like I’m gonna say that _I_ make _you_ breathless? Sure, I’m breathtaking. I’m the belle of the ball. Come on, Steve.”

“You’re breathtakingly hideous. Breathtakingly a pain in my ass.” He dips down and kisses the skin where Bucky’s trapezius becomes his neck. “Breathtakingly got less sense than an empty hermit crab shell.”

He opens his mouth and bites, sucking at him hungrily like Bucky’s the crab pulled free from that senseless shell, defenseless. Like if Steve works hard enough, he can inhale him. His hips try to jump, futile under Steve’s weight, and he’s whimpering, nasal, a trapped noise. When Steve bites harder, shifting so his top teeth press into the center of the already forming hickey, Bucky’s head jerks forward with closed eyes. His face brushes Steve’s hair. Steve lets go. He kisses the bruising spot again, and sits up. He says, like there was no break between thoughts, “I’d continue if you were worth the breath I don’t even have since you took it all away with your record-breaking idiocy.”

“You’re so sweet to me.” He’s beginning to flatten beneath Steve’s attention. Steam-ironed, warm and orderly.

“I do what I can. Now.” Abruptly, he shoves his fist into Bucky’s mouth, fast, so the teeth scraping against his skin must hurt, even if he doesn’t let on. “Shut the fuck up for me. And let me fuckin’ reprimand you.”

Bucky gives him a thumbs up with his left hand. Steve returns the gesture, popping his thumb out from between Bucky’s lips and pressing it to his cheek, a little squeeze. A kind of hug. It makes Bucky’s heart turn to wobbling Jell-o. Gross and over-sweetened. Easy to squish to pieces. 

“All right.” Steve tucks his thumb in so it’s pressed to the inside of Bucky’s cheek instead. “The first thing that’s bad is the fucking backtalk. Telling me what to do. Trying to get smart.” He flicks him on the nose. “Bad. Got it?”

Bucky gives him another thumbs up, and Steve laughs a little.

“Sure you do.” He pulls his fist out. Whether it means Bucky’s allowed to talk now or just means he’s trusting him to be good without assistance is unclear. Asking for clarification would be easy, but Bucky doesn’t want easy right now. He wants to guess, to stumble blindly into any booby traps Steve’s laid out for him, so when Steve continues, “And the second bad thing,” Bucky makes some words stumble out of his mouth.

“Biting you. Sorry. Wanna pull my teeth out one by one so I can’t repeat my mistake?” He clicks his teeth together, trying to be seductive about it. The dental equivalent of batting his eyelashes.

It works, kind of. Steve’s seduced into biting him again, high up on his arm now, harder because he can there, where squishy fat encases the unavoidably large muscle. Bucky whimpers. Pain in solid spikes—a baseball bat full of nails hammering away at him. A choked moan. His chest twists. Steve growls around his captured prey.

It ends, and Steve’s whispering in his ear. “Don’t interrupt me. Bad,” and that answers that question. Steve trusted him to behave, and he broke that trust, but it’s okay. It’s so okay, how Steve’s mouth lingers there, at Bucky’s ear, and Bucky can feel him inhaling through his nose. The small shift in the air between them. Steve’s chest inflates against his, increasing the weight holding him down.

Bucky mumbles, “Sorry, sweetheart,” and Steve kisses him over the opening of his ear. Bites his lobe and tugs. The kiss-stamped hollow of his ear fills with heat, and stays blood-hot when Steve releases and sits up.

One of these days, he better remember that he threatened to pierce Bucky’s ears. The lobes are too smooth and blank, like tombstones that haven’t got their epitaphs yet, when they could have little shield-painted studs showing who owns him, or an ear tag like he’s cattle, or big rhinestone hoops that say “SLUT” inside.

Yeah, he’s got a Pinterest board devoted to earrings, and yeah, he probably just needs to hand Steve a potato wedge and needle one of these days and beg him to go wild.

Plain studs seem like they’d be nice to have in his ears too. On days when he needs to resemble a respectable person, they’d be something to fiddle with besides his hair. He tried wearing a watch for that purpose, but that encouraged bad habits. Backslid him into the anxious unwillingness to let time move forward unsupervised. Walking to the train after work, before he could talk himself out of it, he took the thing off his wrist and handed it to a lady with a cardboard sign, along with the fifty he was gonna hand her anyway.

Staring down at him, Steve says, “Answer the question.”

“You didn’t ask a question.”

“My first question. Pay attention. What do you want from me right now, honey?”

“’Honey?’ That’s nice of you. And me being so terrible today.”

“I obviously meant to say ‘dummy.’ What do you want right now, dummy?”

“Oh, right. Wasn’t that an hour ago? I don’t know really. I just feel—” He shrugs. “The scolding’s been nice.”

“Glad to hear it, but the scolding’s over. That was the whole riot act.”

“No way that’s true, Steven. If anyone can read a riot act for hours, it’s you. New paragraphs of the riot act come to you like breathing.”

“Thought I was breathless.”

“I’m the breathless one. Now who’s not paying attention?”

Steve bares his teeth and puts his face right up against Bucky’s so their noses squish together. Holding his eyes open wide as they can get, he enunciates, “You’re trying to be smart again,” and even slower, melodramatic as a ghost or a goat, he says, “Baaaaaad.”

That cracks Bucky up. Maybe more than it has any right to. But he’s giggling, snorting, shaking even as he’s held down, gazing at Steve in wonder whenever his eyes don’t squeeze shut with the strength of it. He shouts a precisely enunciated, “Haha!” And that must be infectious, or just stupidly funny in itself, because Steve starts shaking too, lips folded into his mouth as he squints at Bucky, whose mouth is stuck open and thrilled, more and more so the longer he takes Steve in. Real, solid Steve, breathless-eyed and everywhere.

The laughter settles down eventually, for both of them. Exhaled in big whooshes. They’re left smiling at each other, Steve sitting up straight now and drawing circles on Bucky’s sternum with a pointer finger.

Steve tilts his head to the side and says, “You were saying. You just feel—? What?”

“Oh.” He licks his lips. “Dumb.”

“Well, you are.” There’s hesitance there, and in his narrowed eyes, and how lightly he flattens his palm against Bucky’s chest. Like he’s worried maybe this is a genuine self-esteem crisis in need of sorting out.

“Sure, but dumb like. Y’know. A squirming, brainless thing. A worm or something. I, you know. I felt the urge to bite you so I bit you.” He shrugs his left shoulder. “A worm feels the urge to crawl through the dirt, so it does.”

“You feel the urge to crawl through the dirt too, last I checked.”

“I do!” And they both laugh again. “It’s a real problem. All the good dirt for crawling’s outside where people might see. So I can’t do that one.”

“But you can bite me.”

“Yes. But I mayn’t. It’s forbidden.”

Steve looks stern. “Forbidden and punishable by the whims of the judge.”

“Sure is.” He bites his lip. “I didn’t want anything in particular. That I knew of. Right now I kinda wanna wrestle.”

“Do you want a fair fight?” Not that Steve himself has fought fair once in his life; he learned to fight in an unfair body, and became the most rabid and underhanded asshole around to compensate. Wrestling with Steve’s like wrestling with a rat king coated in soap. But it wouldn’t be fair of _Bucky_ to not warn a guy if he was gonna give it his all putting up a fight instead of rolling over and showing his belly.

“I’d much prefer a fixed fight, thanks.”

“That can be arranged.” Steve snaps his fingers. “Up.” He stands first, and hauls Bucky up by the left wrist until they’re facing each other. Steve’s got his fists by his face.

“Wrestle, not box, come on.”

Steve shrugs and uncurls his hands. “Yeah, you come on. Try to take me, big guy.” 

Bucky shakes out his wrists, his ankles, rotates his neck. Steve stays posed at the ready, watching, little cartoon hearts practically shooting out of his scalp and floating Bucky’s way, and it’s too much. Bucky puts his hands up too, and they circle each other, small steps, until Steve feints and Bucky leaps out of reach, back smacking into the wall. He shuffles further down the hall and closer to its center, so there’s more space for them to really tussle.

Steve feints again. This time, Bucky’s purposefully sloppy in response, grabbing at Steve’s bicep and aiming to miss. Except Steve slots his own bicep right into Bucky’s left hand, which closes around him in surprise.

Before Bucky can let go, Steve curls his grabbed arm up and smacks a hand over the metal. Trapping it in place, double-trapping himself.

“The fuck, Ste—” 

Steve sweeps his legs out from under him with one casual kick. But Bucky’s hand is still sandwiched between Steve’s hand and arm, so Steve’s yanked down too when he falls. If he weren’t, Bucky might have banged his head on the baseboards, but Steve’s other arm curls around Bucky’s head, cushioning him, elbow knocking into the wall loudly in his place.

So now Bucky’s sprawled, the upper and lower halves of his body twisted in different directions, with Steve a smothering weight on top of him. Steve’s face scrunches up like he swallowed paint thinner, and Bucky pauses before wriggling beneath him in an imitation of resistance. “You all right?”

Steve nods, smoothing his face out. “Hit my, uh. Funny bone.”

Bucky snorts. “Big baby. Come on, fight me here.” He bucks his hips up, thrashes his shoulders around. Left hand freed, he pushes ineffectually at Steve’s shoulder.

In return, Steve puts his hands around Bucky’s wrists, vice-like for the left’s sake, and sits up, digging his knees into Bucky’s ribs. Bucky pokes his tongue out, licking his own face, and squirms.

Then Steve says, “Oops,” and rolls right off of Bucky’s body without releasing his wrists. Yanking viciously, he rolls Bucky over too, to land on top of Steve, who’s laid out on his back, chin tilted up and eyes slits in the expression that always registers in Bucky’s brain as a smug smile, even though there’s no actual smiling involved.

Bucky flails against the hands on his wrists, and gets yanked again for his troubles. Both his hands are violently stuffed beneath Steve’s back. Trapped against the floor. A coerced hug. Bucky flails harder, trying to pull them out now, but Steve throws his hands in the air and says, “I surrender! I surrender, Buck. Jesus. Please. Mercy, Buck. Please.”

“Hey! What the fuck?”

“What? You wanted a fixed fight. I forfeit. I fixed it that way.”

“You knew what I meant!” He sighs and slumps, letting Steve take his weight. Letting Steve have whatever he wants. He mutters into Steve’s shirt, “That’s just cruel, Steven. That’s real sadism.”

“Well there you go. I made you lose by making you win. It’s psychological.”

“You’re the worst. Psychological, like it’s _deep_. You were just feeling lazy, weren’t you?”

“You’ll never know.” He kisses Bucky on the forehead, and lifts his shoulders off the floor. Tugs Bucky’s hands out from under him. “I want to turn the radio off. How are you feeling about that?”

“Please and thanks.” _– Quotes from Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. Speaking with religious leaders at WACO, and spent a weekend with the Gamp family on their farm in Wisconsin, and this cow loves—_ “This is awful.”

“You’re telling me.” He pushes Bucky off, and disappears into the kitchen. The voices cut out. Steve cuts back in, flopping down on the floor next to where Bucky’s lying in a disorganized heap. “Better?”

“A million. Why’d I ever give you such a lousy gift?”

Steve gnaws on his neck, painless. Smiling and twitching, Bucky’s head knocks into his. “No self-respect,” Steve says. “And because you use it too, you phony.”

“I haven’t the slightest what you’re talking about.”

“Where were we? Oh right.” Steve grabs the front of Bucky’s shirt, hauling him closer, hand around his wrist directing him to get on all fours. So he’s braced over Steve’s body. “You were celebrating my defeat.”

Bucky lowers his head to touch noses. “I was explicitly _not_ celebrating your fake fucking defeat. You’re a reverse-cheater, you know that?” 

“Well, all right then. You want fair?”

And then Steve’s grabbing both his shirt and his hair, acting like he’s trying to throw Bucky across the room, but using maybe a third of his strength, so Bucky only has to _think about_ resisting to stay where he is. Growling, Steve tries even more weakly. And the implication that fighting Bucky fair means fighting with all the force of a baby deer fresh out of surgery stretches Bucky’s heart into a ribbon and ties it in a bow.

“Eh,” he says, the best expression of that feeling he can manage. “On second thought, I’ll stay up here.”

That earns him a smile, and a genuine painful tug on his hair, close to the roots. His body slithers in place.

Steve says, “This is the worst thing to ever happen to me. I have to be near you _and_ see your face?”

So Bucky puts their foreheads together and says, “High definition and full-color.”

Shoving his hand between their faces, Steve digs his nails into Bucky’s bottom lip. They’re short and ragged, and he pulls, stretching the skin. Scalding pain zigzags between the two nails, arcing over Bucky’s lip from the wet inside to the outside, a fenced-in current. The broad ghost of a welt. Bucky’s eyes droop shut. When the pain stops, he reopens them. The ghostly welt remains.

Steve says, “That scare you off? You ready to leave me alone?” and Bucky smiles wide and shakes his head, and he’s gifted with a groan.

He settles his weight firmly on Steve’s chest now, and stretches his legs out behind him, feeling perversely, joyfully pesky like a fly in love with a fly swatter. A fly in love with the zapping light hung on the porch. Its warm glow. How it protects its home and everyone inside.

He leans in and _buzz_ es in his bug zapper’s ear, the sensation of his tongue against his teeth growing fuzzy and foreign until Steve smacks his cheek hard enough to burn, cutting him off. Bucky enunciates one final, “Buzz,” and laughs, and revels in the fierce warmth on his face. “Sorry, but I can’t be squashed.”

“Yeah, I noticed. One of these days you’re gonna wake up and walk right into a giant spider web, and I won’t do anything to prevent it.” He gets his arm around Bucky’s neck and squeezes. Reaches down with the other arm and digs his nails into Bucky’s ass so Bucky gasps and humps him. Not a lot. He’s not hard at all, but he’s touch-hungry.

“Oh, that’s all? You just won’t stop it? Steve the hapless bystander?”

“I won’t take responsibility for anything that happens. Any predators that happen to come along and deal with the squirming prey all tangled up.”

Bucky squirms illustratively. Steve pats his ass and kisses his ear. Going boneless, Bucky sighs, and they’re both quiet, breathing and heart-beating together. 

“Hey,” Bucky mutters.

“Hey.”

“It okay if I stay up here a little while?”

Steve draws out, “ _Well_ ,” and pauses so long Bucky’s ready to snap and demand he spit it out. But that’s bad form when he’s asking for something, and sure enough, Steve says, “You going to ask nicely?”

“Puh-lease, Captain Rogers.” He drops his voice low. “Pretty fucking please with a cherry on top can I keep weighing you down with my whole fucking body?”

“You’ve been weighing me down for decades. You think I’m gonna say no?”

“No, but since when does what I think matter?”

“Yeah. It doesn’t.” Steve tucks an escaped strand of Bucky’s hair behind his ear for him. “But you can stay up there. We can stay like this.”

Bucky kisses Steve’s eyebrow and fishes his phone out of his pocket. “I’m putting music on.” He should have asked Steve to switch the radio station instead of turning it off, but here they are now, settled in the silence, which is starting to itch. To irritate. It’s too _large_ and he can’t see it in full; anything could sneak in, all that free quiet space in the air.

“If you put music on, I’m sticking my keys in your mouth.”

“Fair enough trade-off. Wanna shake on it?”

“Of course.” Steve grabs a chunk of Bucky’s hair and uses it to jerk Bucky’s head side-to-side, and a high giggle-cry skips out of Bucky’s mouth and into the smiling face beneath him. “There we go. All shaken.”

While Bucky gets the music going, Steve squirms his keys out of his back pocket and tosses them between hands. Waiting, so Bucky can work without being distracted by the makeshift gag. So sweet and considerate.

Then they’re listening to the playlist Bucky made, for some fucking reason he’s now blurry about, comprised entirely of songs about tennis. Organized from fewest beats per minute to most. Sound trickles into the enormous silence slowly, and Bucky sticks his phone on the floor nearby.

Steve sticks his keys in Bucky’s mouth. He’s got eight, coded with colorful caps Bucky bought him at the hardware store, on a disproportionately large ring. They taste filthy, blood-bright, and make him gag at first. But he works them around with his tongue until they’re resting more or less comfortably, the ring hanging from between his lips. A handle. Drool’s already filling his mouth, and he works his throat to ease it down, drops his head to Steve’s chest, and closes his eyes.

The music and Steve’s heartbeat: tangible, present. Shrinking the room, scrubbing away any threat.

When he starts to feel himself dozing off, he lifts his head and says to Steve through the keys, “Ahrnchght.”

Flecks of drool land on Steve’s mouth, and Steve, eyes wide open, nonchalantly licks them up. He’s scrolling through something on his phone one-handed, but locks the screen and sets it down. He hooks his finger through the key ring. A new song from the playlist begins, the singer letting out a _Yee-haw!_

“You want these out, Buck?”

Bucky nods, and more drool slips down his chin. Steve tugs at the ring, but not enough, just so the jagged metal scrapes his tongue, eliciting a noise from Bucky like a baby velociraptor. Bucky’s eyebrows communicate his displeasure. 

“You really want me to take these out? You sure?” Steve’s thumb comes up and flattens the tip of Bucky’s nose. He’s smirking. “You want my keys out of your mouth, jerkoff?”

Bucky does his best to growl. He balls up his left hand and presses the knuckles to Steve’s cheekbone in an empty threat.

“That’s not very polite.” Still, Steve relents, and drags the keys out slowly. “I’m encouraging bad manners I guess, but. It’s a weekend.”

Dragging the back of his right hand along his mouth, Bucky swallows excess saliva. “You’re getting soft, man,” he says, and flops off of Steve, onto his back. He groans, popping muscles. Notices a water damage stain on the ceiling for the first time and frowns at it.

Next to him, Steve’s sitting up. “Jesus.” He eyes the keys like they tried to claw his eyes out. “These are wet.”

“Oh, wow, who saw that coming? Here I thought my mouth was made of metal too.” Steve glares at him and wipes the wetness off on Bucky’s hair. Bucky can’t manage to glare back. “Hey, don’t wipe ‘em off. My saliva’s got anti-theft properties. No one’ll go picking your pocket now.”

Steve stands, wiping the keys off more on his own thigh. “And I’m just now hearing about this?”

“It’s a new mutation.” Bucky pushes up onto his knees. He sticks his tongue out and swirls it in a circle. “Came on suddenly the other day. New guy with his desk by mine’s been swiping my pens when he thinks I’m not looking. I chewed them up and got ’em coated in saliva and suddenly he’s not such a keen thief anymore.”

“A bona fide superpower.”

“Ain’t it? So I’ve got you. I’m here to keep you safe, honey.” He shuffles closer, so he can press his face to Steve’s thigh, nuzzling, and give him a kiss in one of the few spots he’s got any softness.

Steve’s hand slips through his hair, petting, before he tightens his grip at the crown of Bucky’s skull. Bucky waits quietly for direction, and Steve lets him wait, lets him just listen to Steve’s conspicuously loud breathing.

An upward tug at the roots, and Bucky follows, straightening, until they’re chest-to-chest. Not quite eye-to-eye and nose-to-nose, but close. Tipping his head forward with the words, Steve says, “Yeah, thanks for that,” and it’s not clear if he means for keeping him safe or for kissing him or for standing when tugged or for something else, but Bucky says, “Well. Sure. Anything you want,” because that’s true.

Steve smiles. He brings his arms around Bucky’s waist and kisses him on the mouth. The hold is tight, but the kiss is careful, slow. Like a fresh-out-of-surgery baby deer being re-introduced to solid salt, Steve licks at the metal-tasting inside of Bucky’s mouth while Bucky lets him. While Bucky shuts his eyes and stays lax and secure.

Steve finishes with a firm, close-lipped _pop_ of a peck. Before he can pull back all the way, Bucky opens his eyes and returns the peck, and grins. “Dumbass,” Steve mutters, and Bucky grins harder, performative.

And then Steve’s resting his forehead on Bucky’s left shoulder and all the breath is gushing from his body. Bucky brings his arms around Steve, and settles his chin on the hard head using him as a pillow. Hair stupidly silky and tangle-free for how little care and effort goes into it.

He asks, “You all right, buddy?” and gets a sigh, and a grunt.

“Can a guy not lean against his favorite dumb brick wall once in a while?”

“No laws against it, last I checked.” He kisses Steve’s head. “Being alive is a bitch of a thing, huh?”

“Funny, I’ve noticed that too.”

“Here, let me help.”

Before he can even show what he means, Steve bitches, “You help plenty.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “And now I’m helping more than plenty. Come sit down and eat that whole carton of ice cream with me.” He brings the back of Steve’s hand to his mouth, kissing him gently. “We’ll listen to a better radio station. I’ll sit wherever you want. _How_ ever you want.”

“You always sit wherever and however I want,” Steve says, and kisses the back of Bucky’s hand too, then licks the metal, and Bucky says, “Well, I’m a creature of habit,” as his arm’s sensors register the warm, wet touch in a pleasant burst up his spine. 

-

  


“About this new superpower of yours.”

Bucky doesn’t have a full-body startle reaction, but his face jumps plenty. He’s just gotten home, and Steve is standing there, arms crossed, head tilted to the side. Bucky closes the door. “My whatnow?”

Steve raises his eyebrows and stares at Bucky hard. “About,” he says slower, voice sweeter, “this new superpower of yours. Your anti-theft saliva?”

“We’re still doing that? Great. What about it? Got somethin’ for me to get wet?” He drops his messenger bag to the floor, peels off his jacket and drapes it over Steve’s shoulder.

“Well, sure. Always.” Steve lifts his hand, fingers curled in and thumb sticking up. Bucky smiles and dips his head down to take Steve’s thumb into his mouth. “This isn’t what I was talking about. I don’t think anyone’s in danger of taking my thumb. But you know I’m always happy to see you with me stuffed in there.” He bends his thumb to scrape down Bucky’s tongue, trailing an ache, and presses the nail into the flesh just below his lower lip. Then unbends at the knuckle.

Bucky sucks harder, hollowing his cheeks and laving Steve’s skin with his tongue, trying not to bite. He keeps his eyes on Steve’s eyes and moans.

Steve says, “So sweet for me, aren’t you?” and Bucky rolls his eyes. “Yeah, a sweet, dumb piece of shit. But like I said, that’s not what I’ve got for you.” His thumb pops free from the suction. “I’m thinking I’ve been underutilizing you as a guard dog.”

“Tell me about it. You won’t even keep me chained to a stake in the lobby.” He slips past Steve, toward the kitchen, needing water, sweating at the armpits and the nape of his neck, the day unseasonably muggy and his jacket too heavy, and Steve follows.

“And subject our neighbors to your fucked up face? Now I wonder why I won’t do that.”

“Unsolved mystery. What _am_ I doing to protect our household?”

“You know I get anxious about going to sleep.” He says it like a joke, and they both let that lie. “It might help to know my guard dog’s taken extra precautions with my bedroom.” He hangs Bucky’s jacket on the back of a chair.

Bucky laugh-coughs, and snorts in the middle of, “Oh ‘extra precautions’ with your bedroom. That’s a nice euphemism. Very slick.”

“What euphemism? Just because you’re a degenerate slut who can’t think about anything but getting fucked, I gotta be insinuating something?”

“My apologies.”

“Some of us have more important concerns on our minds.”

“All right, this is very serious. Got it. You want me to drool on your sheets? Lick the windowpanes? Suck the bedknobs?” He waggles his eyebrows, and Steve snorts. He hasn’t got bedknobs, but he should. That room could stand to be little less Spartan. He should have four posts. A canopy, even. Velvet curtains befitting his wealth and fame. 

“An intruder’s at my bed, they’re already too far. No, I want you to suck on the doorknob. Outer side. So no one can get in but you and me.”

Being named as one of the two VIP club members for Steve’s bedroom stirs up a stupid amount of affection in his chest, like he doesn’t know better than anything that he’s always welcome in there. Like he doesn’t already climb into bed with Steve nights he can’t sleep, and hold him for a while, like Steve’s a giant, violent teddy bear. Why buy one of those microwavable stuffed animals, cute as they may be, when he’s already got someone perpetually hot, soft for him, and full of radiation?

He clears his throat, and sets about filling a glass. “All right. How often are we talking? Are we talking right now? You want me to crawl down the hall right now and blow your doorknob?”

The day began with him spilling two coffees on himself at once, and while it didn’t go downhill from there, it didn’t go uphill either, and his muscles are anxiety-knotted and complaining in a way that he’d rather pile more interesting pain on top of than try to massage away. Massage, Epsom salt, mentholated balm: all great methods for reminding himself further how fucked his body is. Getting his _mouth_ fucked with a doorknob, though—that’s a great way to forget. To forget he even has muscles, or a spine.

Steve says, “Do you want to do it right now?”

“Do you want me to want it?”

“I want to take that water and dump it on your head.” But he’s laughing. “Do. You want. To do it right now?”

Bucky gulps down the lukewarm water and refills the glass before answering. “Don’t wanna put off a matter like security. Let’s do this. Are my clothes on?”

“Why would I need your clothes off for you to blow a doorknob? Jesus, like I said. Just ‘cause you’re a degenerate, sewage-encrusted, _insatiable_ slut—”

“Okay, clothes on, I gotcha, asshole. Just let me hydrate.” 

“Good idea. You try this with a dry mouth, you’re no good to me.”

“I’m never good.”

Steve shrugs one-shouldered.

When Bucky’s ready, he just drops to his knees, and crawls toward the door. Passing Steve’s chair, he expects to be stopped, his arm kicked out from under him or his hair grabbed, but Steve watches him go like watching a train speed by on the opposite track. Then stands up to follow politely.

He lets Bucky lead the shuffling parade down the hall. A silent parade, more like a funeral procession, if a funeral procession were understood to end with the corpse jumping out of the coffin and scaring everyone and mocking the mourners for crying.

These pants fit tight; they’re the first nicer piece of clothing he bought for himself, before he managed to finally start putting on some weight, and he should really take them out of his work wardrobe rotation, but he’s got a sentimental attachment. On top of that, the fit means they’re uncomfortable to crawl in, his motion subtly limited, and he’s already starting to blush thinking about Steve staring at his ass in them, swaying as he goes to Steve’s room to get used.

They’re good pants to have around.

At Steve’s door, he starts kneeling up without having been told, but thinks better and plants his hands on the carpet. Hangs his head. He says, “This okay, Steve?”

“Well, you’re gonna need to sit up, dummy.” Steve crouches down, and he grabs Bucky’s hair, using it to pull him upright, saying, “Come on, I’ve trained you to stand on your hind legs by now. Right?”

“Right.” Sitting back on his heels, hands on his thighs, Bucky grins at Steve, who grins too before steering him by the hair to face the doorknob head-on, and to shuffle forward, so his mouth is up against it. The metal’s warm, as though before he got home, Steve was fiddling with it thoroughly, planning this out.

“Go on,” Steve says. “Kiss it. Show it you want it.” Bucky gives it a peck, and then another, loudly, and turns to look at Steve for disapproval. Steve delivers, raising his eyebrows. “Come on, Buck. Don’t pretend to be a prude. Really show it a good time.”

“Well, I didn’t want it knowing I’m a sewage-encrusted slut, but if you say so,” and he dives in with a long, slow lick across the thing’s whole surface. This is how it would taste if Steve used him as a piggy bank, shoved loose change in his mouth. Threatened to smash him with a hammer instead of uncorking him properly. He scrapes the taste from his tongue with his teeth before diving back in, lapping at the sides and where the knob connects to the door, straining his neck to mouth along the top curve.

Steve’s hand appears in his hair, and Bucky stops with his tongue hanging out but not making contact. “There we go,” Steve says. “Now it knows what you are, huh? You were being modest, but the truth won out. Didn’t it?”

Bucky nods, his scalp burning with the movement. “I’m a slut for your doorknob, Steve. What can I say?”

“Well.” Steve crouches down next to him, tugging at Bucky’s hair so they’re locking eyes, and says, “Hopefully you won’t be able to say anything in a sec.”

“That so?”

“That’s very so. You made a valiant effort getting this slobbered up, I’ll give you that. But I think to be _extra_ careful, you should put the whole thing in your mouth.”

Bucky nods harder, hurts his own scalp more, and says, “Yes, please.”

He must look even more eager than he realizes, because Steve giggles through the words, “Glad we agree, then.” He puts Bucky’s head back where it’s most useful, then lets go of his hair. “Now do it.”

The knob is just barely too high for Bucky to get his mouth around, and he has to lift his thighs off his calves, adding height. Adding strain. Not that he can’t hold the position; he could for days, if his life depended on it, but he’s aware of the increased effort on his body’s part in a needling way. Something below pain, more factual. He’s like a computer; every little new thing he tries to do at once eats up some memory. 

But he stays lifted that inch or two, and forces his mouth around the knob, allowing it between his teeth to rest comfortably behind them. Fenced in. His jaw’s open almost surgically. Wide and ready for a root canal. With how the knob narrows past the part behind his teeth, his lips have got nothing to satisfyingly close around. And his range of movement is limited; he can shift forward and backward, but hardly. Less motion than a strong shudder in the freezing cold. He’s trapped contemplating the door. Its proximity to his nose. What would happen if Steve jerked it open now? Would it force the doorknob into his resistant throat? Broken nose; black eye?

But no. Not happening. Steve pets his hair. Kisses his stretched-taut cheek, and the bulge of his nostril; Steve’s face has to wedge in between Bucky’s and the door awkwardly for that, which plucks a tight string in Bucky’s chest.

He doesn’t taste anything besides the residual brass on his tongue from kissing the thing for Steve’s entertainment before. The absence is wrong; it’s like his mouth is being held open by an imaginary object instead of something real and kind of gross. So he seeks the brass’s tang, noticing how his tongue’s almost depressed and lifting it, pushing it forward to lap at the knob, and he starts to gag. Harsh sounds, spit oozing from him, the force in his throat bringing tears to his eyes, and Steve says, “Hey, hey,” and Bucky forces his tongue flat and depressed. Eases his head back some.

Now he has damp eyes, a dripping mouth, the taste of brass even brighter on his tongue. No more gagging. He gives Steve a thumbs up, and Steve kisses the pad of his thumb before biting it, so Bucky’s shoulders draw in and his hips jump. Steve’s top front teeth press like a garrote to the skin just beneath his nail.

Then Steve’s not biting him; Steve’s holding him from behind, calves bracketing Bucky’s calves, hugging Bucky’s upper arms and chest bindingly, hands folded over Bucky’s heart, and he noses at Bucky’s hair. Steve smells like sweat and deodorant, sawdust and hot metal. He licks the back of Bucky’s neck, purposefully extra wet, blowing on the damp patch to make him shiver, and says, “Look at you, like this. It’s a good use for you, I think. Good use for that huge, stupid mouth.”

Bucky closes his eyes. Wishes he could go totally limp while he’s held and put to use instead of needing to hold himself up that bare amount. His thighs shake for a few seconds, psychosomatic. He manages to say around the knob, “Ahrhncg,” in place of the less hideous moan he might give Steve otherwise.

Steve says, “Yeah? You sure? Wow, that’s so interesting, Buck. Tell me more.”

“Uhoohugan.”

“Oh really?” Steve snickers in his ear. “Sounding like a fucking malfunctioning machine, Buck. That what you are? He twirls some of Bucky’s hair around his finger like spaghetti around a fork. “My big industrial drool-making machine?”

This time he does mean words instead of moaning, means, _Yes, please_ , but he makes a sound like whalesong.

Steve understands. “Yeah, that sounds right. I bought a whole factory just to keep you in. Excessive, I know but—Not like I got anything else to keep in there. Just my heap of rusty metal producing all that drool for me out its fuckhole.” One of his hands leaves Bucky’s heart, and his finger swipes along Bucky’s lower lip, stretched over the knob, collecting drool that he smears across Bucky’s cheek. “Slobbering all over the place. Keeping me safe.”

A sudden twinge in Bucky’s groin, one sunbeam pulse of feeling. But mostly he’s aware of his face, of his gaping mouth and the dampness that’s returned to his eyes. One tear escapes, and another chases it. He moans for Steve, and Steve folds his hands over Bucky’s heart again. It’s difficult, with his upper arms restrained, but Bucky manages to twist his left forearm and put his hand on Steve’s knee and squeeze.

Steve says, “Aw. The equipment’s getting handsy. Might be past its bedtime.” Bucky’s shoulders jump with a laugh that he manages to keep from reaching his mouth. “Think I should shut it off?” 

To answer, still holding Steve’s knee, he stretches his tongue forward to lick the knob again, and gives himself up to the gagging, his writhing throat, his streaming eyes, the ugly small sounds, and Steve tugs him off the doorknob with a messy grip on his hair. Lays him down, spread out on his back with his legs unbent.

Bucky’s eyes are wide and wet, and so’s his mouth. He licks up some drool from his own chin. He says, “Hey there,” to Steve, who’s sitting cross-legged next to him, one hand remaining heavy over Bucky’s heart.

“Hey. Was that nice, huh? You like doing that?”

Bucky pants, “Not nice. Terrible. Loved it. Love you,” and Steve ducks down to kiss his open mouth, and Bucky tries to participate. But his mouth’s stretched, aching and lax, so mostly he lets Steve kiss and lick him and pushes upward into the attention.

Sitting up, Steve says quietly, “You got my knob _very_ wet. I can’t imagine anyone’s gonna be breaking in there tonight.”

“Good. That’s good. Should I do my own door next?”

“No.” Steve looks baffled. “Who would want to steal you?”

Bucky smiles and snuggles closer to him, head on Steve’s thigh, face against his stomach so he can kiss him there. Hums when Steve ducks down to kiss the skin beside his eyebrow in turn. “Someone could. You don’t know.”

“Doesn’t matter. I built this factory for me and me only. I bought this machinery for me and me only.” His thumb dips into Bucky’s mouth, prodding his tongue, pulling out with a _fwip_ sound. “It’s a private industry.”

“Possessive,” Bucky says lightly, and Steve doesn’t argue. Steve the opposite of argues, palming Bucky’s ass, offering to show him exactly how possessive he can be.

-

  


Befriending animals comes easy. All he has to do is put himself near them, seem warm-blooded and still, and let them show him how they want to be touched. When he sees a stray cat dart beneath a car, unless he’s on a tight schedule, he’ll sit down on the sidewalk until she slinks out to investigate him. He never has to hang out at a dog park long before someone runs up and slobbers on his face. And the cat next door, an elderly tortie named Miss Louisiana 2000, races to the door when he walks in with the copied key her mom left him. And flops over belly-up in his path.

“Hey there, baby.” He shuts the door and sits down cross-legged in front of her. Strokes at her fluffy stomach—with his right hand, so when her paws come together and grab his thumb, she can bite without hurting her teeth. “Ahhh,” he says, wincing. “Oh no. You caught me!” She bites him harder, and he hisses and pulls away. “All right, all right.” He rubs her belly lower down, and she relents this time, stretching. Curls her paws up and blinks her trust at him. He blinks back. “I know, I’m here early. But I bet you’re hungry anyway, huh?”

He scratches her under the chin, and she rubs her cheek on his finger. Her mouth pulls to the side, showing a sliver of tooth. He says, “Lemme grab your dinner, angel.” She licks at his knuckles, and he takes them away, not wanting to feed her subway grime when he should be feeding her canned tuna or whatever nutritious bullshit’s in there, and gets up, trailed by her into the kitchen.

He isn’t terrible at making human friends, exactly. He’s better than he would have been a year ago. Two years ago. Ten years ago, for sure _._ But there’s laughing and chatting with Marti at reception and bringing her coffee most mornings; there’s reclining in a planetarium seat next to Natasha, casually hooking their little fingers together as they’re zoomed through chunks of geode-like far-off space where aliens might live **;** there’s being the kind of affable guy someone might trust with her key and her cat when she’s upstate visiting her daughter and daughter-in-law; and then there’s just wading out into the wild unknown.

E.g. there’s attending a flower arranging workshop. A social kind of thing, with cocktails, in the decorative-pillow-filled loft above a florist’s sales floor. In the middle of trimming a calla lily’s stem, he found himself snapping the stems of _all_ of his lilies in half and throwing himself out of his chair dramatically enough that it toppled over, because someone squeezing behind him in the small space spilled maybe a shot’s worth of her sidecar. The drink rolled down his cheek and the side of his neck, leaving a light brown splotch on his sweater, and the sensation and the smell—

He doesn’t know what it was, exactly. But he also didn’t stick around once he’d gotten his chair righted and apologized to the shaken woman who’d spilled her drink. 

Miss Louisiana 2000 nuzzles the can opener when he sets its teeth on the Nutritious Bullshit can’s lip, and Bucky nudges her off. “I’m a fucking mess, ain’t I Lulu? Lulu-luzy-annie-anna? Yeah. Yeah, you don’t care.” The lid pops open, and he plops the food onto her special square plate. “I’ve got it pulled together enough to open a can and that’s good enough for you.”

Caramel-splattered black paws pressed together daintily, she stares at him, ignoring her food.

“Right, right. Hang on, baby. How could I forget?” He picks a sprig of mint from the shelf of potted herbs above the window and sticks it in the middle of her Nutritious Bullshit like a candle in a cupcake. “There we go.” She chirps and digs in. “Yeah, you’re finicky, aren’tcha? But that’s okay for a cat.” He strokes her with one metal knuckle, and waits until she’s done to go home.

Their kitchen window’s half-open, breeze fluttering the curtains. In the gap between them, he sees Steve’s shoulder, one ear and tufted hair. That fire escape initially struck them both as a security concern, but they take care to keep the window under extra special high-tech lock and key when not in use. If they didn’t have that kind of technology, though, the rumpled, alive-eyed way Steve always looks after coming inside would be more than enough to justify the risk.

Or so Bucky can tell himself when it’s just a hypothetical and letting his affection win out over practicality and paranoia is consequence-free.

He leans his elbows on the windowsill. Sweeps aside the curtain to get a better look at the curve of Steve’s back, his bent-forward neck, the corner of a book visible in his hands. Some of the tension Bucky’s been carrying in his own neck and his hips and stomach dissipates. Reverse-osmoses out through his skin. Maybe Steve can feel that shift in the air, or more likely he doesn’t have completely shitty situational awareness and heard Bucky’s footsteps and the metallic scrape of elbows on the windowsill, and Bucky’s breath, hitching with fondness.

Without turning, Steve says, “Hey, Buck.”

“Hey, yourself. Reading anything good out there?”

“Uh, yeah. The one you got me last week. Yeah, it’s good.” He flips the book shut, and glances over his shoulder. “Thanks.”

“You don’t gotta stop on my account.”

“I want to stop on your account. Missed you today. And it’s getting chilly anyway.”

“It’s still fucking balmy. But don’t let me stop you.”

“Don’t worry.” Steve stands, and Bucky hears him yawning, back cracking. His voice, quieter: “You’ve got zero permission to stop me doing anything.”

Bucky says, “Sweet of you,” and lifts the window further for him to climb in so he doesn’t have to do that himself. Moves toward the icebox so Steve’s leg has room to make its grand re-entrance, followed by the rest of his lumbering body.

Sure enough, he’s rumpled, alive-eyed, slightly sunburned high on his cheeks and the bridge of his nose, and completely worth it. Worth any risk imaginable. That’s a lot to handle. Bucky takes a breather, ignoring the sight of Steve closing and locking up the window in favor of studying a gallery opening promotional postcard that they stuck on the freezer because Steve thought the composition was striking. 

Steve says, “You look pretty today.”

“Oh. Thanks.” He tried to; his hair’s braided in a crown around his head, and the polka dots on this sweater match his eyes, and he put some product in his eyebrows that said it would make them defined and _organized_. If he made any kind of good impression on the floral-arranging crowd, his appearance probably did most of the heavy-lifting.

He looks over at Steve, who’s not saying anything, or moving. What he’s doing is frowning at Bucky with his forehead crinkled but affection plain on his face, like now _he’s_ watching Lulu eat her mint-garnished food with her five remaining teeth.

“What?”

“Well. You.”

Bucky rewinds, picturing the two arrows on the clicker button to remember which direction he’s thinking in. A handy bit of the future. He hears himself. “Oh. Jesus, don’t make a big thing out of it, all right?”

“I’m not making a thing out of it! It’s fine. It’s normal, I’m just, I don’t know.”

“No, it’s not, but thanks for lying. Look, I’m not gonna be willy-nilly thanking you for that kind of thing during sex or whatnot so get that out of your head, please.”

“You think I’m gonna willy-nilly say you look _pretty_ during sex? That sound like me?”

Bucky glares. “Not my point, all right.”

“I’m not making a thing out of it.” Steve puts his hands palms-out in front of his chest, placating. “I’m sorry if I seemed like I—What I mean is, have whatever glitches you need, Buck. I can look the other way.”

“Okay, fine. Fine. All right.” He leans against the icebox, spine slouchy and his hands flat to the door. Magnets imprint alphabet shapes on his right palm. “You’re not making a thing out of it.”

Steve crosses his heart. Mimes slitting his throat. “I promise.”

“Stick a needle in your eye. Please, I mean.”

Steve smiles and is kind enough to acquiesce, holding an invisible needle between forefinger and thumb and jabbing himself in the eye. He shrieks and staggers back.

Bucky cackles. “Okay, all right. I believe you. You’re not making a thing out of it. But.” He bites his lip hard. “You wanna make a thing out of me?”

“Really? That’s a terrible line, Buck.”

“I think it’s pretty good.”

“Yeah, okay.” Steve drops his book to the floor like it’s not the fucking property of the library and deserving of respect, and says, “It really is a good line.” He walks toward Bucky. “Very effective.” Traps him against the fridge. “Very convincing.” His hands grip Bucky’s hips. “My compliments to the pretty seductress.”

Chin tilted up, Bucky looks at him mutinously. “You’re not thanked.”

“Oh?”

“ _No thank you_.”

Steve bites him on the nose so he squeals, then kisses him there. “Gee. How will I go on?” A bite to his jaw, followed by another kiss. “Without your thanks. I’m wounded.” And his hands move from Bucky’s hips to his ass, groping, and he says, “Up you come,” and lifts him, and Bucky makes it easier by raising his legs to circle Steve’s waist, draping his arms over Steve’s shoulders as Steve kneads his ass, bouncing him.

Bucky laughs, delighted, weightless, and kisses Steve above the eye he stuck an imaginary needle in. There’s no imaginary blood there or anything. Supersoldier healing never fails to amaze. “Wait a minute,” he says, grinning.

Steve’s grip on his ass turns more supportive than lascivious. “You all right?”

“You spoke a lie.” He remembers, now, a long time ago, insisting on saying the full thing, proud of having it memorized, until whomever it was he hung around with before Steve told him too many times to knock it off and stop being an annoying little freak.

“What?”

He tries to put a more obvious sing-song cadence in his voice. “You never really wanted to die.” And he takes his right arm from Steve’s shoulder to cross Steve’s heart again. “ _Cross your heart and hope to die. Wait a minute, you spoke a lie—_ “

“I get it now; I get it.” He laughs. “Never really wanted to die. Sounds right.”

The couple times he let the rhyme slip out around Steve when they were kids, Steve never told him to knock it off. He loved it, would ask Bucky to memorize other things for him and reel them off.

“Sounds _exactly_ like you.”

“Shut up, idiot.” Steve sounds excessively fond. That must be humiliating for him. They start moving again, into the hall, and Steve’s teeth clamp down around Bucky’s whole mouth.

His skin is pliable in that grip, bread dough for Steve to work into shape. The fierce pain of it shoots straight to his eyes, causing him to tear up already, and his whole scalp is sensitized. He strains forward into the teeth, smashing his nose against Steve’s cheekbone, and Steve doesn’t relent, exactly, but switches to active bites, opening and closing, shifting so places worked over with his sharpest teeth are met with smooth round edges, and vice versa. Bucky tries to force his tongue out from between his lips for Steve to bite too, and when he manages, he repulses himself. It’s like he’s forced an internal organ to burst through his skin, slimy and unfit for the world.

Steve just forces his tongue back in with his own tongue and bites Bucky’s mouth the hardest he has yet. Bucky screams through closed lips. Then the scream escapes into the air, sharp, turning into a shocked yelp when Steve dumps him on the carpet.

The area around his mouth stings like beard burn, and his lips are swollen, must be red and lewd. He lies in a ball, waiting for Steve—standing over him, hands on hips—to tell him what to do. Steve kicks his ribs where they’re presented to the ceiling, light. Then crouches to tap Bucky’s hunched left shoulder with the blade-edge of his hand

Bucky blinks wetly and hurries to straighten and kneel on one knee, the other squared up in front of him. His heartbeat travels down, a voice across a telephone wire murmuring sweet nothings. It thrums through his stomach, his groin. There’s his femoral pulse, alive and loud; there’s the hot shivery wanting in the backs of his knees.

Steve says, “Wait like that.”

They’re right outside Steve’s bedroom, but Bucky’s turned facing down the hall, toward the front door. So he can’t see what’s going on when Steve disappears into the bedroom, not without trying, and he tries his best not to try.

Steve emerges and pulls the door shut behind him as he tosses something onto the carpet. One hand lingers on the knob, twisting, and the knuckles of his other hand brush Bucky’s cheek. Then rub more firmly, stuttering over his cheekbone, depressing soft flesh, dragging as they round down the curve of his jaw. Each repetition of the motion makes Bucky more aware of his own materiality. His thing-ness. He’s a fossil, and Steve’s doing a crayon rubbing. Finding the shape of him. Intending to own that shape and hang it on the wall.

The knob click-click-clicks in fidgety turns behind him. Taunting. Letting his knuckles come to a resting place beneath Bucky’s jaw, Steve moves his hand from the doorknob to Bucky’s shoulder, a blade, tapping, and kisses the top of Bucky’s head and says, “Kneel down and face the door.”

Bucky relaxes onto both knees, rotating ninety degrees, and out of the corner of his eye he sees that whatever Steve got from his room is hidden in a bookbag. Plain black cloth. Bulging-full.

He puts his palms flat on his thighs. These pants are thin, silky. Easy to destroy. 

Steve taps the top of Bucky’s head with a single finger. He says, “You better not have more plans for the day, ’cause I’m gonna fuck up your pretty braid now.”

“More plans? You know how late it is? I’m elderly, Steve. I’m ready for bed.”

“Oh, yeah, Buck? You want to go to bed now?” His fingers slide into the braid crown. Slotting into the gaps where the sections cross over, and beneath the braiding, touching his scalp. Bucky gasps, pushing into the hold, the threatened tug. “You don’t wanna be my drool machine? Primary employee at Steven Grant Rogers’ Famous Drool Factory? You seemed to like it so much last time.” And Steve pulls, bending Bucky’s neck so he’s looking straight up at Steve.

“’Employee’ implies you pay me, y’know.”

A harder yank, and this has to be the furthest back his neck can go; he isn’t elastic. The base of his throat and small of his back firm up, becoming the steely structures around which the floaty vague notion of his body orbits. His breath is sliced thin. 

“Are you going to be my drool machine, blockhead? Are you gonna slobber all over that knob for me like the set of sopping wet needy holes cursed to look kinda almost human you are? Huh?”

There should be something between Steve’s teeth, gripped by that casual cruel grin. A blade of grass. A toothpick. An umbrella stolen from Bucky’s drink in a midwestern restaurant where everything on the menu’s got a gimmicky action-movie-themed name and Bucky’s seen enough modern movies while holed up in motels that he can enjoy explaining some of the references to Steve at the same time as giving himself a strawberry daiquiri mustache.

Holding that umbrella in his mouth, folding his napkin up small, turning green then magenta then violet like a bruise slowed down and pieced apart, Steve held Bucky’s hand on top of the table and made fun of him for not even being properly drunk. For instead being wired off the sugar content in his increasingly elaborate drinks. And Bucky babbled at him, mouth messy-huge and warm, insisting “Oh, Sam said you would _like_ it probably, huh? I think you would _hate_ James Bond, Steve. Hate him. Every part of him. Oh, I don’t, no, I love him, but let me tell you—”

Bending over, touching his forehead to Bucky’s so their eyelashes almost tangle together, Steve says, “You gonna be a good, industrious hole for me today?”

“Sure.” Bucky’s voice is blurry from having his head pulled back. “Haven’t got anything else going on.”

Steve straightens up. “Oh, you _really_ need this, huh?” His fingers leave the braid crown, but Bucky knows better than to assume that means he can lower his chin, and then sure enough, Steve’s hand is spanning his tipped-up jaw, heel of the palm over his Adam’s apple, little finger pressing into the softness beneath his mandible’s squared corner. In this hold, Steve could make Bucky nod or shake his head _no_ like a puppet. But all he does is kiss the fingers on his own free hand and touch them to Bucky’s forehead and say, “That’s okay. I know exactly how to fix that attitude.”

He releases Bucky’s jaw, shoves his head forward and down, and cuffs him on the back of the head.

“Thanks, Steve,” Bucky says. “Always looking out for me.” 

Steve says, “That’s what they pay me for,” and knits his hand into Bucky’s braid again, this time steering in the doorknob's direction, urging Bucky to shuffle forward on his knees until he’s close enough to hide the knob in his mouth like it’s contraband.

Bucky lifts his thighs from his calves to put his mouth at the necessary height. But he stops with his lips kissing the metal, not wanting to take initiative. He’s a machine; they definitely don’t pay him to have ideas. 

Forceful, Steve’s thumb draws circles at the base of Bucky’s skull. Right in the hollow of the bones there. “What’s stopping you, lunkhead?” he asks, and Bucky melts at the edges.

“I mean. What’s starting me?” He considers risking a glance over his shoulder, but that would mean both moving without permission and—entangled as they are—moving _Steve_ without permission. A pretty hefty crime. He settles for raising his right arm and tapping Steve’s hand in his hair. His fingers brush the stray hairs curling over Steve’s skin.

Then: Steve’s lips on the back of Bucky’s raised hand, and Bucky’s mouth sinks into smiling. He says, “Want I should backhand myself in the face?”

“Actually? Usually, yeah, but not right now. I know what you’re saying you want. But I’m not giving it to you if you don’t ask. Sound fair?”

“Absolutely unfair. Perfect. Well. I’m the machinery, right?”

“Exactly. B minus for you. Nah. C plus.”

“Aw, look at me, all almost accomplished. And you’re the, uh. Foreman?”

“Owner. I’m the machinery’s owner.”

“Now how’d I not guess that?” He’s melting more; spread him on toast. “Foreman, owner, but the point is, I can’t turn myself on, can I? You need—What?” Steve’s giggling, the hand in Bucky’s hair trembling. “Oh. Okay, wow, mature. I need you to _turn me on_ , Steve.” Steve’s giggling bursts upward into a squawk, and Bucky continues over him, managing to suppress his own giggling. “So the factory can begin operations for the day and produce sufficient drool product, all right?” 

Steve untangles his hand from the braid crown and puts a hand on each side of Bucky’s head, cupping his ears. Clearly meaning to be stern but still giggling too much to pull it off, he says, “You gonna say please? _Please_ may I turn you on?”

“Yeah, yeah, okay, please, Steve. Factory-owner Steve, please turn me on. Please help me start my job as your drool-producer. I don’t know how to do anything else and nothing makes me happier than being useful for you, so please?” The last word wavers. Hovers in the air in front of his face.

Steve says, “I guess. If it’s really the only thing you’re good for,” and two of his fingers hook between Bucky’s top front teeth; they yank up, and then two from another hand yank down on his lower teeth, and Bucky feels like his face is nothing but front teeth, a braying donkey, as Steve tugs him forward the minute amount needed to get the knob jabbing into his mouth.

Steve says, “Time to start the workday!”

Bucky says, “Ah-eh-ooh-un,” jaw panging. Steve’s fingers are in the way, preventing the knob from sliding home instead of banging against his teeth, but Steve knows that; Steve takes his fingers out and presses at the back of Bucky’s head, and Bucky’s mouth stays open on its own; the knob fits between and then behind his teeth, and he closes his eyes. Laps at the metal with his tongue and manages not to gag in response.

He’s learning.

Steve says, “There we go. There you are.” He stands behind Bucky and gets to work dismantling the braid crown all the way. Each bobby pin makes a low, skittering sound as it slides free . Magnified in the quiet between them. He doesn’t yank; he’s careful to remove them without removing any small hairs caught in their crimped grip. His fingers remain gentle when Bucky’s all de-pinned, working apart the sections that cling in a braid shape with the residue of sweat and hours, encouraging them all to lie loosely down Bucky’s back, and Bucky keeps his eyes closed, holds still, lets his mouth hurt, lets his raised thighs demand extra effort from his processing abilities, lets himself drool. That’s his job.

When his hair’s been smoothed into a heavy mass covering his neck and shoulders, when Steve’s content and steps off to the side, Bucky wants to signal his own contentment. He tries to sigh happily. It comes out as a ghostly moan. Steve laughs softly, then tuts. Says, “My machine makes _so_ many noises.”

Bucky makes a similar moan to agree.

There’s a dull thud, and that’s the sound of Steve’s skull against wood, familiar, and Steve whispers, “Hey,” and sweeps a finger over each of Bucky’s eyelids in turn. Bucky looks at him, how he’s leaning his head against the door, his hip against the wall, looking down at Bucky from so high up. He sort of shimmers, indistinct, with how Bucky has to strain his eyes to the side to see anything except the patch of door immediately in front of him.

Bucky’s responding _Hey_ comes out like, “Aygh!” He blinks hard a few times, and his eyes are damp.

“You know,” Steve says, “I just remembered: There’s a safety inspection scheduled today.”

“A-wuh-uh-zuh-eh?”

“That’s right. I got the call yesterday. Someone’s gotta come in and make sure the factory’s up to code.”

Bucky rolls his eyes, and Steve pushes off from the door, out of sight, and kicks him in the back of the thigh. The blow forces him forward, and he gags as the knob pushes into his mouth at a new angle. Before he can adjust, Steve’s hand is in his hair, holding him in place while he struggles not to struggle, eyes wide and wet. A tight coil of heat writhes inside him, connecting his throat and chest, which are threatening to burst. Steve laughs, but relents, easing Bucky off the knob entirely with one hand in his hair and one under his jaw. Bucky opens and closes his mouth, swallows, mentally zeroes in on the heavy slide of drool down his chin.

Steve nips at and then kisses his earlobe and says, “Yeah. There we go. That’s what I like to see.” Bucky flicks his eyes toward him; Steve’s face is huge, everywhere, like he’s got his eye pressed to a microscope and Bucky’s the thing laid out on a glass slide. “Now get back to work, sweetheart! Eyes totally forward. Or I’ll make you gag much longer.”

Bucky mumbles, “Okay, Steve,” and gingerly fits the doorknob through his teeth, lifting his thighs again, though he hadn’t noticed he’d lowered them when Steve pulled him off. That he’d taken what chance he could to rest. He keeps his eyes totally forward.

Behind him, Steve unzips the bag and rummages. There’s cloth involved, a shuffling sound, but otherwise it’s hard to gauge what’s happening. Bucky stares at the white paint, marred by a greyish smudge. Then Steve shows back up in his peripheral vision, and clears his throat, cuing Bucky to look.

When Bucky shifts his head the bare amount he can and cuts his eyes to the left, he has to will himself not to cackle so he won’t choke. Because Steve’s wearing a lab coat with bulging pockets, and big square black plastic glasses. He’s holding a clipboard. A laminated name tag hangs from his shirt pocket. The safety inspector is named SteVe. 

Bucky raises and lowers his eyebrows at SteVe, but SteVe ignores him, frowning down at the clipboard and taking a pen from his pocket. He scribbles something and sighs, then looks at Bucky. Assessing. He walks in a slow semi-circle around him. Out of sight, he jots down something new. Raps the top of Bucky’s skull with his pen.

“Christ. They call this a factory? One outdated machine? I mean, what are these?” He leans down where Bucky can watch him out of the corner of his eye. Grabs Bucky’s chin and pulls, prying his mouth even wider. He slides the pen in alongside the doorknob. The point jabs into Bucky’s cheek. “Are there fucking cobwebs in here?” He removes the pen, and stands. “Disgusting. No wonder there’s talk of closing the place down.”

Bucky takes his mouth off the doorknob. This is important. This is a cause he needs to fight for. A string of drool hangs from his lips, and he twirls it with his tongue. “SteVe,” he says, voice fucked-hoarse, and SteVe looks up from where he’s bent over the clipboard again. “You can’t close it down. If I don’t produce drool for Steve, he might die. He might be _killed_ in his sleep.”

“Excuse me?”

“This is a life-saving service.” He licks his lips. “There’s gotta be a way I can persuade—”

SteVe wrenches Bucky’s head back by the hair. He’s looking at him like Bucky woke up this morning transformed into a giant beetle. The backhand to the mouth is heavy and sharp. Head held in place, he can’t do anything but take it.

SteVe lets Bucky’s head fall forward and yells down the hallway, “Why is this factory equipment talking to me and who told it to take its fuckhole off that doorknob?” No one responds.

Shivering warmth wraps its arms around the fireman’s pole of Bucky’s spine and slides down. Lands hard in his pelvis. His mouth—his _fuckhole_ —feels too mushy for saying more shit, so he goes to put it around the knob, but SteVe the Inspector clears his throat, and Bucky pauses and side-eyes him, still facing the door.

SteVe’s eyebrows are scrunched up, mostly hidden behind the ridiculous glasses, and his jaw is obnoxiously clenched. He digs around in a pocket of the lab coat, shaking his head. “See,” he says in an undertone, “this is why you don’t go around making these things sentient, or whatever—” He waves his hand— “ _approximation_ of sentient we’re calling this.” He kicks Bucky’s calf. An approximation of amicably. And takes out blue nitrile gloves, which he pulls on after abandoning the clipboard at his feet.

“They malfunction a little bit, and that would be fine. That’s what equipment does—but then they start trying to fix themselves, and well.” He brings his gloved hands together with a _clap_ that makes Bucky jealous of the air between them. “The malfunctions just pile on, don’t they?”

Not sure if he’s supposed to answer, Bucky nods in a short jerk. If he’s not supposed to answer, then it’s another mechanical malfunction, piling on. The machinery’s twitching now. Hit it with a broom until it stops: the real technical solution.

SteVe slips two blue fingers into Bucky’s mouth, reaching around and leaning down. Then he slides them to the left, pressing into the inside of Bucky’s cheek, dragging Bucky’s head around to face him. A stabbing ache arcs up his cheek’s new pronounced curve, ending wetly at the corner of his eye. In the moments before he adjusts and moves where he’s put, it’s like the skin above his upper lip is trying to disconnect from his gums.

SteVe stares down at him and sighs. “Look at me. I ask why the equipment’s talking, and then a minute later here I am talking right back. Like there’s anything in there but cogs and cobwebs.” His free hand knocks on the top of Bucky’s skull. “Sounds like a good ripe melon. But not much of a conversationalist.” He smiles. “It’s a lonely job.”

And that makes Bucky’s heart ache along with his mouth. He wants to shuffle forward on his knees, wrap his arms around SteVe’s legs, kiss his shoes. Kiss his knees. Kiss his hands. Which is stupid, really, he still knows somewhere in him. SteVe is Steve, and the machinery is Bucky, and they already have each other. Having each other is the least lonely job. This, right here, Steve manhandling him with cool detachment, fingers in his mouth, is the opposite of lonely. But as SteVe pulls his gloved fingers out, the machinery can’t help but chase them, kissing the tips.

Indulgent of his slip, SteVe whips his fingers hard against Bucky’s cheek. The sting sparks brighter from the wet of his own saliva.

Feeling bolder, readier to own the fact that he’s malfunctioning, Bucky lifts a hand toward his mouth, flat, fingers brushing his bottom lip, and gestures it toward SteVe in the sign language for _Thank you_. Like it’s really a human hand, not some fiddly thing attached to the drool-producing equipment.

SteVe, in a reedy put-on of panic, pleased surprise seeping through and turning his voice punchy, says, “What the _fuck_ is that? What is it doing now?”

Bucky repeats the motion, but as his hand tips forward again, SteVe grabs his wrist. Implacable around the whirring, shifting metal. And crouches down to look at the arm close-up, studying its grooves as though through a magnifying glass. “Did this come _disconnected_? What the fucking hell?”

Bucky smiles. He says, “Gee, how’d that happen?”

SteVe, bless him, hits Bucky in the face with Bucky’s own heavy hand. Bucky gasps and whimpers, scrunching his face up, disappearing for a moment into the rush of blood loud in his ears. SteVe says, “And it’s talking again. Christ. I was afraid it would come to this.” He straightens, dropping the arm. “Ah, well. Time to take it in for repairs!”

Too fast to process, his hand’s making a home in Bucky’s hair, tightening and yanking. Bucky yowls, and hears SteVe cursing at the spit-slippery doorknob before it’s turning and SteVe’s kicking the door all the way open—there’s a splintering sound, definitely; he fucked that up—and Bucky’s being dragged to the bed. Tossed into the middle by a hand around his bicep and another beneath his thigh, and he bounces, giggles.

He watches as Steve takes off the glasses and throws them into the corner of the room; they smack into the wall, probably crack, and Bucky laughs. Steve is too busy taking off the nametag and throwing that too to hit or pinch him for being rude, but does frown. Then he shucks off the lab coat, leaving it on the floor, unbuttons his cuffs to roll his shirt sleeves up to his elbows, and takes a sticker out of his jeans pocket.

He peels off its backing, and slaps it on his chest. _HELLO, my name is: FUCK YOU_.

Bucky laughs with a creaky long intake of breath and says, “Yeah, you promise that?” His stomach and throat both stiffen with joy.

Steve grunts and gets on the bed, kneeling in front of Bucky’s splayed body. He places a hand on Bucky’s stomach in the same manner he’d place a stethoscope over his heart. He says, “Seems like SteVe wasn’t lying.” He doesn’t pronounce the capital _V_ as well as Bucky does, but that’s okay. “This thing’s really out of whack if it’s speaking in full sentences.” A long-suffering sigh. “Well, that’s what they pay me for.”

“Who’s paying? ‘Cause I’d really like to write them a thank you card.” The force with which Steve slaps him on the cheek thrusts his face into the bedspread, and makes his dick pulse with need, and Steve does it again, same cheek, turning his head more. He’s a faceless, squirmy _thing_ that just wants to get off. His skin stings, bright and hot, shooting up to his temples, and it’s like a needle’s drilling through his cheekbone.

Steve shuffles around him to kneel by his chest. He tucks Bucky’s hair behind his exposed ear. “Now what I really think this thing could use is a few good dents. Smack it around. That always gets them working right again.”

Bucky nods. He wants dents. He wants to be a new shape for Steve. For FUCK YOU. Same difference.

“Foolproof solution,” Steve continues. “But, well.” He strokes Bucky’s cheek, then drags his nail down, slow, drawing a straight line of heat, a brand. Or like he’s trying to peel Bucky’s face off like a price tag, which—

Bucky shakes his head minutely. “Hang on, Steve, sorry, don’t—”

Steve takes his hand away.

“Just. Not that specific thing. Weird in my brain. But please keep going.”

“Okay. Okay, shhh. Good fucktoy. Thank you for telling me.” Steve pats the scratched skin. “And for being so polite, saying ‘please’ like that. What a well-behaved little idiot slut.” He’s laying it on thick; Bucky whimpers. His insides feel viscous. “As I was saying, denting always works. But.” He sighs. “I pawned off my crowbar to buy bread for a starving family. It’s a shame.”

Bucky snorts. “Wow, FUCK YOU the Repairman’s a real swell guy.”

“Aw. It says such _stupid_ full sentences too.” Steve yanks on a bit of his hair, tugging his face away from the bed, and Bucky shrieks. “But, hey, if I can’t dent this heap of garbage, I can resort to other measures. Let’s see, shall we?”

He makes a show of craning his neck, squinting, examining Bucky from all different angles. He gets down low, peers at Bucky’s arm from about half an inch away, and studies his vulnerable throat. He stares up Bucky’s nostrils. He mutters, “Where’s the fucking—I know the outside panels come off somehow _._ ”

Bucky swallows, and Steve moves to kneel between his legs, casually pushing them further apart. Handling him like a doll, dead weight that Steve can move with ease. Steve hovers his face just above where Bucky’s erection blatantly bulges in his pants. Bucky bites his lip, and doesn’t hint at anything by moving his hips closer to Steve’s face.

Steve says, “Huh. Is that—” And he bangs his forehead against Bucky’s dick. It’s startling more than anything. Bucky’s a door slammed shut by a sudden burst of wind. He shakes in the doorframe of his skeleton and mouths an _Oh, oh._

Steve pulls back, rubbing at his forehead. “Jesus. Could have knocked myself unconscious on that thing. Guess I found where to take the plating off. But I don’t know.” He tuts. “It hasn’t talked in a long while. Problem might have gone away on its own.”

“There’s still a problem,” Bucky says in a rush. “Lots of problems. I’m broken as fuck, FUCK YOU.”

“Christ. Fine.” His fingers curl around Bucky’s waistband and he starts dragging his pants and briefs down together, a slow operation. “Guess I gotta see this through to the end. The shit I do—” Freed, Bucky’s dick is red, the head slick and shining, and it’s embarrassing how he can’t not stare at this stupid thing on his body, and more embarrassing how Steve doesn’t have that problem, how easily Steve ignores him bobbing around in the air— “for below a living wage.”

“You unionized?” Bucky looks away from his dick, and into Steve’s squinting eyes. “You should strike.”

Steve stops what he’s doing and smacks Bucky across the face again. Hot and loud, the blow catches the corner of his mouth and a nostril. “Like that?”

Bucky blinks, eyes dampening. He works his jaw. “Like what? I’m a piece of factory equipment, man. I can’t hold a coherent conver—” He swallows hard—“sation. And double entendres? Please.” 

“Good. If the problem got that bad, I’d just need to take you to the dump, I think.”

“Oh, you can take me to the dump. That’s fine.” More than fine. Steve could roll him up in a rug. He could bury him in garbage. 

“No one’s getting taken to the dump tonight. Now let me remove your external plating. Got it?”

“Got it. Roger that. A-Okay.” Bucky lies still and quiet as Steve finishes pulling his pants and briefs down. He doesn’t even need to lift his own hips, Steve doing all the work. So determined about it, so methodical, so that when he’s done and he knee-walks up the bed, positioned so he could easily knee Bucky in the balls, Bucky can’t not say, “I love you.”

Steve’s mouth twitches, and he taps his name sticker. “Well I don’t love you. You’re a fucking piece of factory equipment.” He pinches the inside of Bucky’s thigh and twists the flesh, and a thin electric jolt pinballs around Bucky’s body, and his legs try to snap shut but can’t, wedged open by Steve.

His face feels permanently stuck grinning, and he licks his own chin, blinks in a quick flurry. “But I’m a _sentient_ piece of factory equipment. Doesn’t that mean anything these days?”

Steve shakes his head. He gets out from between Bucky’s legs and pushes them together, like he’s politely closing a door behind him. Then he straddles his stomach, an uncomfortably focused weight, forcing Bucky into hyper-awareness of his own breathing. On top of that, he stuffs three fingers between Bucky’s lips, and Bucky’s a hunk of factory equipment, so he doesn’t suck. Steve feels around in there. Poking at his cheeks. Depressing his tongue. Owning him, even as the repairman. He puts a finger on either side of Bucky’s lingual frenulum while the third finger lounges across some teeth, and strokes up and down.

Not much sensation registers, but knowing how thin and breakable he is there suffices. All he can do is lie here and hope that the giant looming over him—humming thoughtfully, keeping him in place—will be merciful.

Steve takes his fingers out, and wipes them dry on Bucky’s hair. He says, “Drool production’s still down, I see.” A sigh. “Business isn’t going well. The factory might have to shut down. And here you are, fretting over whether the repair guy loves you.”

Bucky smiles at him, and shrugs. Steve copies his shrug, and pulls an innocent face, and dives in to absolutely fucking maul Bucky’s mouth so Bucky’s still trying to think of a comeback when the inside of his head is burnt up, blackened, spitting and crackling.

Steve’s mouth is vicious, teeth stretching Bucky’s lips, biting down, warm and wet and Bucky can’t tell if he’s bleeding or if it’s all just saliva and body heat, but Steve is sucking on his tongue, holding it in place with an incisor, and Bucky’s squirming, thrashing, his hands curled like paws and pushing at Steve’s shoulders weakly and any time his mouth is free to move because Steve’s busy gnawing on his jaw, Bucky mewls, high and loud, only to be silenced, tongue sucked and bitten, and he thinks he’s going to wriggle all the way out of his skin when Steve lets up.

When Steve kisses the tip of his nose and sits up, flushed and grinning, dragging a thumb over Bucky’s lips. “It’s cute that you think you’re sentient enough for someone to love. _Pathetically_ cute. But I’ve got a job to do. And some of your plating’s still on.” And he climbs off, kneeling by Bucky’s waist, so Bucky can take a full breath again. “But I guess it wouldn’t hurt to explain to you how you work. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

“No.” Feeling like his pupils are the size of his whole face, Bucky pants between words. “I don’t know shit.”

“That’s what I thought. Well I gotta pry this off, ya see.” He lifts Bucky’s arms so they lie alongside his head, and strips him of his sweater and undershirt, tossing them to the floor. “Now we’re cooking.” His hand rests on Bucky’s near hip, fingertips short of making contact with his dick. “All nice and exposed.”

“Which—” Bucky clears his throat. “Which parts did you need to get at?” 

“Hmm. Well.” Steve loudly taps the side of his own nose. The hand on Bucky’s hip glides upward, over his stomach, stopping to thumb at a tight, peaked nipple, and Bucky’s muscles clench; his dick jumps. Wetness splatters on his stomach. Steve takes his hand away. “No, nothing I need seems to be up there. See, this—” And then he’s got Bucky’s dick tight in his hand—“Looks like the nozzle. That’s all right, then. But there’s supposed to be an entry hatch.”

“Oh?” The word shatters into a gasp as Steve begins windshield-wiping his thumb over the head of Bucky’s dick. Then, nail dipping into the drooling slit, he distributes the wetness with circular motions. The heel of his palm rubs roughly at the underside, and Bucky stretches, his body a slinky frozen in the act of moving from stair to stair while his brain jumps straight from the top step to the bottom.

Steve says, “Yep. This is definitely the nozzle. It’s going to need to be unclogged.” He lets go, and Bucky whimpers, hips lifting to follow him, but Steve slaps his stomach—more sound than pain, though the sheer fact of impact makes the muscles in his thighs flex—and slides a hand under his ass.

“Oh, I think—”One finger slips between Bucky’s cheeks, prodding at his hole. Causing him to tighten up, protecting against a dry intrusion. “There we go,” Steve coos. “That’s it. I think we found it.”

“I’m so. Glad.” 

“Gonna need to flip you over,” and then he is flipping him over, the hand under his ass and another on his hip driving the motion.

Bucky rubs his face on the nearby edge of a pillow, then lays his cheek flat on the bed, wanting his expressions to be visible for Steve, who suddenly stands, leaving him there spread out and naked and in need of repair. When he cranes his neck to see Steve digging in a dresser drawer, his dick drags along the quilt, the soft bunchy fabric and raised seams, and he moans, pleasure slicing up through him like it’s butterfly-stroking across a pool. His right hand closes in a fist around the sheets, and watching Steve’s shoulders hunched high, blades shifting like tectonic plates beneath his t-shirt, Bucky moves again, humping the quilt. The sensation of it is less clear-quick-athletic this time, oozing through his hips. Filling them up. Raising their temperature.

Steve, returning with both fists closed around small objects, says cheerfully, “And what the fuck are you doing over here?”

“I’m sorry, FUCK YOU. Sorry, sorry.” He raises his hips to remove the temptation. “Malfunctioning?”

“That’s right.” Steve settles on the bed on his knees, on the side Bucky’s facing, petting a hand over Bucky’s ass, encouraging him to lift his hips higher. Doling out firmer stroking when he’s obeyed. “You can’t help it, I know. That’s why I’m here to fix you up now. But first!” He raises his hand and lets the tape measure curled in his palm unspool, its still-wavy length dangling from between his fingers. “I need to get some numbers.”

“Measuring my di—my nozzle?”

“Nah. Just need your overall dimensions. Gotta be sure I’m working on the model I think I am.” He smooths out the hanging tape measure. Holds it by the middle and playfully whips it against Bucky’s ass.

It’s not much of a sting, but it _is_ a sting, and Bucky says, “Mmm, thanks,” and rolls his hips, and the tape measure comes down across his shoulders this time, three times, fast, stolen kisses.

Steve says, “I need you flat for this. Down,” and presses on Bucky’s ass so his dick is against the quilt and he has to focus on staying still.

He manages. He stays very still and quiet as Steve fusses over measuring him, working up the length of his body to get his height, spreading the tape flat across his shoulders and humming in response to whatever that number is. Checking the distance between the bedspread and the highest point on Bucky’s ass for some fucking reason, which makes Bucky need to hide his face for a moment, breathe the sheets in deep. There’s the faint smell of the Mountain Air Fresh fabric softener he insists Steve use, and the stronger smell of Steve sweating through night terrors.

Steve says, “There we go. That’s all set,” and places the tape by Bucky’s head in a neat coil. “Now we can get down to the real business. You know what that is?”

“Fixing me?”

“Fucking motherfucker Christ.” He drags his hand down his face, and sighs. “You’re still talking. Yep, then. Fixing you. See if we can get rid of that pesky verbal bug.” He holds the second small object up for Bucky to see—a sample-size packet of lube, from the community center probably—and tears it open with his teeth, making a face as some gets in his mouth. He spots Bucky’s amused smile, half-hidden in the covers, and flicks him on the chin. He says, “I could squirt it in _your_ mouth too, you know.”

“I’d let you.”

Steve settles one knee between Bucky’s legs, preemptively preventing them from springing shut. He settles all his weight on the thigh he’s straddling. Which means he plans to finish Bucky off too fast for his leg to fall asleep. “Obviously. But then I’d have to investigate your hatch dry. Don’t think we want that.”

There’s a whole bottle of lube on the nightstand. Others are scattered throughout the apartment in case of urgency. But those don’t exist in the immediate reality of Bucky the Drool Machine and FUCK YOU the Repairman. The amount of lube Bucky’s allowed to have is finite, occupying less space than a pack of Wrigley’s spearmint.

Bucky says, “Who here doesn’t want that, exactly?”

Steve hums thoughtfully, then pulls one of Bucky’s ass cheeks to the side, and Bucky feels himself drop like a pair of cement-filled shoes into his own body, without having known he wasn’t already in there. The world narrows. _He_ narrows, impossibly small and delicate, especially where Steve’s holding him open. He imagines Steve dribbling his ass like a basketball. Spinning it on one finger. Holding it under his arm and carrying him home after a long day on the court.

He tenses his pelvic floor muscles. Wishes he could draw his testicles up inside his body so they, at least, could be protected from scrutiny, even if his hole has to remain on display. Offered up to Steve, whose thumb massages him where it’s gripping the sensitive inner flesh, stuttering over the coarse curly hair there, flattening the fat to reach muscle, which clenches in response.

Steve spits on his hole, body-hot but startling. Bucky’s hips jerk and he groans and wetness shoots from his dick onto his stomach, same temperature as Steve’s saliva, and he’s still caught in that flashbang of embarrassment when Steve starts easing a finger into him. Into his hatch. Lightly slick with spit, but there’s enough friction that he hisses.

“ _Steve_.” It’s no worse than the burn of his twice-mauled mouth, but his whole lower half shudders and both hands spring shut into fists gripping the bedsheets.

Steve says, “Shut it, scrap heap. I’m tryna work,” and forces his finger in further, so Bucky squirms, ass shimmying, and his first, ridiculous, petulant thought is that this is _mean_ of Steve, and the simplicity of that wraps his brain and heart in silk. His insides: smooth, sleek, easy. His insides also: dry and rough and clutched tight around Steve’s finger to stop him from intruding further.

He manages to get out, “You said no one wanted this.”

“And you questioned me. Questioning me has consequences. For instance, what if I stick another one in here now?” A second finger brushes the rim of his hole, and the breath in Bucky’s lungs shimmers; he bears down harder in spite of himself and can’t help but whine.

“Steve, no. Or, well—Maybe? I’m—No. No, please.”

“That’s a no? So you’re gonna be a good little broken machine when I pull this—” He circles the finger already inside Bucky, opening him further—“out?”

“Yes, yes, yes, okay. I’m sorry. I was wrong. I was joking. I was—Hubris. I had hubris. Sorry. I’ll be a good machine.”

“You’ll be a broken machine. ‘Good’ might be an overstatement.”

He jerks his finger out, and Bucky hisses at the reignited burn. But Steve gets straight to business, squirting a dollop of room-temperature lube onto his hole, which Bucky can feel fluttering, still exposed to scrutiny by the hand on his ass.

Bucky breathes out, “Thank you. Thank—Fuck.”

Steve dabs at the lube on his hole, distributing it more evenly. “No fucking here. Fucking’s for people, not factory equipment. I’m just getting into your hatch.” The dabbing turns to pointless patting, like Bucky’s hole is a small animal in need of comfort. Restless, Bucky lifts his hips, but that yields no response. Gentle patting. Pat, pat, pat, and he’s opening, muscles more relaxed now, practically rolling out the red carpet. Each time the pad of Steve’s finger pushes against him with the lightest pressure, he feels himself trying to suck it in further, greedy.

When Steve squirts more lube out just to spread it up and down his crack, Bucky lets out a sob of frustration.

Steve _tsks_. “I don’t know why the instruction manual says to do all this. This thing’s been wet and open for ages now. Maybe we can finally—Hmm. No, thirty more seconds still?”

Under his breath, Bucky counts down, “Thirty. Twenty-nine, twenty-eight—” only to have the numbers and his thoughts swallowed up by Steve’s teeth clamping around the meat of his ass. Bucky gasps and jerks, and Steve bites down harder, like he’s trying to hold him still, and he does feel trapped despite how much room he’s got to writhe, to twitch, because it gets him nowhere. Except, for a few moments, with his ass shoved further into Steve’s face.

Until Steve lets up. “Two, one, zero. All right.” He presses on the bite mark, and Bucky’s breath catches; he feels split open there. A stone fruit cleaved in two. And then Steve’s sliding two fingers into him at once, slow, grip tight over where he bit, pulling the flesh to the side to give himself a good view of what he’s working on.

Bucky scrabbles, clawing at the sheets; lying flat like this, he’s got no leverage. No real ability to participate.

“Sometimes,” Steve says, when his fingers are fully seated, twisting them to the side so the knuckles on the rest of his hand bump up against Bucky’s perineum, “you just have to get in here, make sure it’s staying loose and open.” He twists more, corkscrews his fingers, pumping in and out incrementally, and Bucky gasps through little broken moans, hands twitching, thighs spreading further. Asking for it. “When they tighten up, stop getting used, you can get some problems.”

“Like—like what?”

“Like that. All that noise? Sounds kinda like human language, I know. But it’s just you begging to get opened up and used right.”

“Yeah, please. Please open me up, Ste—FUCK YOU. I need it.”

“Wow, good thing we’ve got an expert on staff. Someone else might think you’re speaking English and asking someone to—what, open you up? But _I_ know that you’re desperate. And begging. _Me_ to use you and open you and get you stuck wide and loose so everyone who sees you knows what you’re for.”

“Oh yeah, huge d—” His voice is propelled into a squeak by Steve’s fingers finding his prostate, rubbing at it, lighting sparklers in his gut, his throat, behind his eyes, but he forces himself to continue, “Huge difference there. Completely. Thanks for your detective work.”

“There you go again.” Firm rubbing deep inside him, so he’s transformed into a mass of squeaking in a twitching humanoid shape. “I’m so fluent all I can hear is you begging. This is what I went to trade school for, y’know? I learned all the techniques to fix things like you.”

Bucky chokes out, “Get all ‘A’s? Diploma to hang in your office?”

“Well, okay.” Steve’s voice is mostly laughter. “If you _insist._ ”

His fingers switch to light brushing, easing some of the building pressure in Bucky’s groin. Replacing it with a flickering, ticklish sensation. But his other hand rakes down Bucky’s back. Nails spaced far apart. Beginning at his nape, gouging him to the top of his ass. Five lines of rough heat. His thighs, his back, his arm and shoulders and jaw clench. Steve claws upward, heightening the burn, and Bucky whimpers. His hips thrust desperately against the quilt. He’s going to ruin it; it’s already ruined; he’s rutting in a pool of the gross warm wet drooling from his dick, slicking up the bed for him, drying on his stomach. That’s okay. This is what he’s supposed to do. He’s here to get unclogged.

Steve’s fingers prod purposefully inside him and he thinks he’s about to blow, but then they slip out. Leave him opening and closing, asking them to return. And Steve’s still got his ass cheek pulled to the side so he can watch the motion, the pathetic begging. Bucky starts flexing his hole with intent, putting on a show, burying his heated face in the bedspread until Steve grunts and grabs his hair, putting Bucky’s face back where Steve can see it.

“Come on,” Steve says, rough-voiced, clawing at Bucky’s back. Down his ass, his thighs, faster than before. In turn, Bucky ruts faster, getting floaty, forgetting how to do anything but this. “Let it out. Earn me my paycheck like a good little fuckmachine.” He bites the already bitten spot on Bucky’s ass, teeth diving in with what would once have been every ounce of strength he had.

Now he has to try to not tear Bucky to shreds; he’s going _easy_ on his poor fragile fucktoy. That knowledge braids together with the deluge of pain from Steve’s teeth, which move to his squishy, sensitive thigh, and the burn of nails scraping over that renewed bite on his ass.

That does it. Holding him open, Steve must be watching his hole contracting and relaxing like crazy, in sync with every other muscle he’s got.

Roaring like harsh winter wind rushes through his head, in one ear and out the other, circling his skull to repeat the journey, loud enough to blow him away any minute now. For one blip of consciousness, he wonders why, then realizes it’s how fast his eyelids are fluttering. Imitating REM. Telling a story backwards: the tiny muscles around his eyes vibrate like tree branches in a storm, and then the storm is born and consuming him, its noise megaphoned-up by the pounding of blood in his face from shame and lust and Steve’s mouth sucking and biting bruises into the insides of his thighs while scratching up the small of his back.

FUCK YOU the Repairman did it. Unclogged him. Fixed him. Took away his words and replaced them with moaning and grunting and, “Steve Steve Stevestevepleasepleasesteve,” which isn’t real words at all. Primal noise from the lower atriums of his heart.

Come wets up his skin and the quilt so they’ll both need washing. Maybe they’ll go in the washing machine together. Steve would push the button for “heavily soiled.” Dump the Mountain Air Fresh fabric softener in Bucky’s hair first, like shampoo, and rub it into his scalp. Fill his mouth with detergent so that could get washed out too.

Which he needs. To be soaped up, rinsed out. Until he’s good and clean and well-mannered and docile and societally acceptable and—Steve’s laughing in his ear, he realizes. He’s been mumbling all that, and Steve’s laughing at him. He cuts the stream of adjectives off, but he’s too happy to hear Steve laughing at him. His lips do something like frowning, his eyes like he’s gonna cry—not that there aren’t already tears welling up—but he knows Steve can tell it’s all supposed to be a smile. A _stick a fork in me I’m broiled and finished and love you so much and love being stabbed with cutlery also, by the way_ smile.

Steve mutters, “Already pretty docile, sweetheart,” and kisses Bucky’s cheek.

Bucky hums in agreement. He tries to lift his head to kiss Steve, but he’s too wrung-out, his orgasm stuffing all his remaining energy and coordination in its pockets and purse as it hurries out the door. But Steve helpfully puts his cheek next to Bucky’s lips, and now the kiss doubles as an expression of gratitude for that assistance.

Steve sits up. Runs his hands over Bucky’s back, lighting up the dozens of scored red lines, though Bucky’s too tired to much react. Steve says, “That should solve our problem, I think. You think so, slutmetal?”

“ _Slutmetal?_ ”

“What? You heard me.”

Bucky strains his neck to look up and sees that Steve’s blushing. He grins and says, “Yeah, okay. No, I don’t think so, ’cause I can’t think. I’m just some brainless slutmetal.”

“What kind of metal is that, do you think?”

“I don’t _think._ I just said.”

Steve slaps the sore inside of his thigh, and Bucky jumps. Squeaks. “Curb the lip. Tell me. Come on, science genius. What’s the sluttiest metal?”

“Uh. Mercury. ’S got the lowest melting point. Seems as good a criteria for slut material as any.”

“Sounds right. God knows you melt into a dumb needy pool the second I so much as look at you.” He sighs and flops onto his back, stretched out next to Bucky. On the wrong side; Bucky has to change which cheek is pressed into the mattress to see him. “And here I thought not livin’ with a thermometer in my mouth meant my risk of mercury poisoning was gone.”

“You eat too much canned tuna to really think that, honey.”

“Well, there’s that.” His hand holds Bucky’s bicep extra tight, shoving in an order to flip over, and Bucky does. His marked-up ass lands in his sticky come, and he makes a face like he isn’t pleased by how gross it is. Steve can see right through him. Steve says, “And there’s this,” and scoops come off Bucky’s stomach with one finger. Pops that finger in his mouth, sucks, and swallows. “That’s the real danger.”

Bucky laughs. “Hey, save some for me. I’m starving.”

“Factory equipment ain’t gotta eat.”

“Pet fucktoys gotta. I’m a lot of different kinds of thing.”

“Nah. I’ll save this all for myself, I think.” He scoops more into his mouth. “We’ve got plenty of fucktoy pet food in the cabinets if you need to eat. Vet-recommended.”

“Come on, Steve. Please? We both eat some, it’s romantic. Milkshake with two straws.”

“That’s the most disgusting thing you’ve ever said.” He slaps Bucky’s face lightly. “What the fuck is wrong with you?”

“Nothing anymore. Remember? Just got unclogged.”

Steve smiles and says, “Yeah, you did,” and indulges him. Sticks a come-covered finger in Bucky’s mouth for him to suck, and when he’s swallowed his own salty mess, Steve rubs more come on Bucky’s cheek, Rubs it in like lotion, and Bucky grumbles but lets him. Steve’s fingers pause there instead of returning to the remaining mess. He says, “So, this,” and draws a line down the side of Bucky’s face with a fingertip instead of a nail. “Anything you wanna talk about?”

It takes a moment, but then Bucky gets it and shrugs. “Just a glitch. Weird mental image.”

“Okay.” Steve kisses his forehead.

He doesn’t _have to_ explain more; he knows that. Sometimes his brain makes bad connections. Sometimes Steve’s brain makes bad connections. Their brains are the real hunks of malfunctioning machinery here.

But now that he’s limp and lazy post-fuck, it’s kind of funny. “I was thinking about Schmidt.” His laugh comes out harsh. “You know, uh—” He makes his hand into a claw and mimes tearing his own face off. “Flash of that.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, bobbing his head to the side. “That would kill my hard-on too.”

“Well lucky me I diverted you before that could happen. Wouldn’t wanna spend the night on a boner funeral, y’know? Writing eulogies and all that. Putting on my black lace veil.”

“Lucky you.” Steve reaches down and takes Bucky’s limp cock in his hand. “But there wouldn’t be a funeral. This thing went down, I would’ve made you get it up again, and who knows how I would’ve done that.” He twists his grip, sudden and cruel, and Bucky whimpers, drawing his legs up. Steve fondles him a bit more before showing mercy. Moves his hand to Bucky’s knee. “Can’t fix the machinery if the nozzle’s still clogged.”

“Ugh. Christ, you’re so fucking—” He sighs, and smiles, squinty. “You know.”

“No. What am I?”

The most accurate answer to that is _Steve_ , but Steve doesn’t know what the hell a Steve is. That wouldn’t communicate shit. The first translation he thinks of is _Completely fucking off your rocker_ , but what he ends up saying is, “Persistent.” He smacks his hand against Steve’s chest. “Endlessly. More than a human being’s been before ever. In the whole record of civilization. Pre-civilization.”

“Yeah?”

“Pre-pre. None of those fish in the water getting ready to grow legs were persistent as you, and they were fish that grew legs. That’s real persistence.”

“But I got ’em beat.”

“That’s right. Just like you got me beat.”

“The word’s ‘whipped.’”

“Nah, I’ve got you that.” Instead of making a whipping sound, he says, “Ka-ching,” and Steve agrees, “Ka-ching,” wrapping an arm around Bucky’s shoulders, drawing him close as the laws of physics will allow.

“Sounds about right, Buck. Sounds like you’re the expert.” His hand slips under Bucky’s neck. Massages the knotted muscles.

The bass of their upstairs neighbor’s music filters through the ceiling, throbbing, and Bucky’s right hand is strangely empty; it should be holding a cigarette. The camera would capture him from above. Him: sweaty and wrecked. Then: a cloud of smoke obscuring his face. He says, “Just been a glitchy kind of day.”

“Yeah, well. Me too.” Steve raises his eyebrows. “Can’t believe I went and told ya you looked pretty.”

“Right? You fucked _up_ , Rogers.” He’s giggling, peaceful. Snorts before adding, “I look ‘pretty?’ I mean, that’s a pretty fruity thing to say, I think.”

Steve barks a laugh. “Fuck off.” He playfully shoves at Bucky’s head. Even as his other hand continues massaging.

“I’m just saying, you go around saying shit like that, people might start to get the wrong idea about this relationship. They might think something a little risqué is going on here.”

“Oh, you think so?”

“I’m just looking out for you, buddy. Protecting your macho heterosexual reputation.”

“Wow, thanks for that, Buck. You’re a real hero. I’ll ask the city to throw you a parade.”

“Now _that’s_ fruity, Steve. That’s some incredibly homosexual behavior, and insufferable besides. You’ve got a lot of learning to do about—about—” He yawns, and hears the ocean. That momentary hushed roar when the world narrows down to breath and his own pounding blood. He sniffs loudly, shifting onto his side. Snugs the top of his head beneath Steve’s chin, and pushes on. “About communicating the nature of our friendship the right and proper way to people. That there’s no funny business here.”

“No funny business,” Steve echoes, playing with Bucky’s hair. “Only deathly serious and boring business.” 

“There we go.” Cool air blows in through the cracked-open window. Goose pimples crop up along Bucky’s thighs, and he bends his legs, willing them to fuse into a floppy, shining mermaid tail he can curl under himself. He mutters to Steve’s slow heartbeat, “Can you put my pants back on.”

“Say ‘please.’” There’s no heat in his voice.

“No.”

Still no heat; just warmth: “You’ll say please or I’m putting them over your head and standing you in the corner.”

“Well, now I’m conflicted.” Wriggly, he shuffles off of Steve’s body so he won’t be weighing him down and stopping him doing the favor, and says, “Pants, please, Steve? Please put ’em on me?”

“Yeah, fine.” As he stands, he grunts, and he yanks Bucky’s hair to elicit a matching grunt. Before getting Bucky half-dressed again, he bends down and scrapes his teeth over Bucky’s hipbone, and kisses him, unbearably sweet. The real, vicious bite he follows up with is even sweeter, and Bucky covers his face with both hands. The bass above thump-thumps louder.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Video available [here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AO6H4r9R1UM) and lyrics [here](http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Pansy_Division:He_Whipped_My_Ass_In_Tennis_\(Then_I_Fucked_His_Ass_In_Bed\)) for the song on Bucky's tennis playlist beginning "Yee-haw!"


	2. prelude to terror

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. End notes contain a specific warning for something in this chapter that falls under the "mild mindfuck" tag; I don't think the thing in question merits being tagged "consent issues" but it might be considered adjacent to consent issues.
> 
> 2\. Despite what this fic may lead you to believe, _Religious Socialism_ no longer exists in printed newsletter form, though it can be found online [here.](http://www.religioussocialism.org/)

Enough days later that he’s forgotten about them, Bucky finds the socks and sweater he left in Steve’s room sitting on his table-bed. They’re clean, mountain-air-scented, the sweater folded and the socks tied together instead of rolled, so as not to wear out the elastic. Steve’s stance is, “Elastic wears out eventually. That’s how it works. My sock drawer doesn’t have to look stupid to delay the inevitable,” but they’re Bucky’s socks. That’s how Bucky stores them. And why would Steve want something of Bucky’s to not look stupid?

A scrap of fabric’s sewn into the inside of the sweater collar, peeking out from beneath the care and handling instructions. Bucky lifts the top tag, and his breath catches. Blue embroidered text skitters across a silky white rectangle. Something that’ll slide noticeably against his skin, impossible to ignore.

The blue says, “You’ll suffer.” A promise. And it’s not Steve’s handwriting, but something in the lines of it is undeniably Steve-ish. Prickly-shaped. Loud.

Suddenly desperate, needing, Bucky unties the socks, rolling down the cuffs, and sure enough, there are silky labels sewn in there too, magenta-threaded. One says, “Fucktoy.” The other says, “Ugly.” He lays them flat on the table in the opposite order so “Ugly Fucktoy” stares up at him. He smoothes them. He grabs the sweater and bites the collar, stifling whatever it is that’s trying to escape his throat. Whatever pulsing, glimmering thing. His eyes squeeze shut.

And then he pulls his t-shirt off, tossing it under the table, and wrestles himself into the sweater, so fast that he initially sticks his head through an armhole. He could go out into the living room like that, let Steve see him like that, but, well. No need to put smeared fluorescent lipstick on an already mud-streaked pig. The sight of the sweater alone should make Steve happy enough.

Lit by their glass-shaded floor lamp, Steve is tucked up in the armchair on top of a stack of folded afghans and quilts. The other junk they store on the chair is lined up on the floor, saved from being crushed or bent out of shape by his bulk. The Walkman Bucky got from a stoop sale. An assortment of pens and pencils and forks and spoons and barrettes. The rainbow umbrella Steve tried and failed to beat him with a couple months ago—it  _ sproing _ ed open on his ass, and they had to stop because Bucky was so hysterical, curled in a ball, screaming with laughter, while Steve, exasperated, pinched his ribs and pet his hair and lied that it wasn’t that funny, come the fuck on—has its Velcro strap tightly wound around its middle like a corset.

Steve looks up from his pad of graph paper when Bucky walks in. “Good morning.” He tucks his pencil behind his ear. All he needs is a graphite smudge on his cheek and a suspender carelessly shrugged off his shoulder and it would be 1940.

“It’s after two, Steve.” A little later, he knows, but he’s not counting, not right now. 

“So? Haven’t seen you all day. That makes it morning.”

“Yeah, ’cause the world bends to your whims.”

“Yours does.”

“Sweet-talker. I was at the dog park.” He walks closer, and Steve puts the pad on the floor with all the other shit. Thinking he’ll get pulled into the chair, into Steve’s lap, Bucky extends his hand. “Ate some pizza. Bought some lightbulbs.” 

But Steve slips their hands together and stands, acting as though he’s been tugged, and shuffles close to Bucky. Kisses his hairline. “Meet any nice dogs?”

“Hundreds.” Half a dozen. “One was named Astronaut Larry and I fucking cried.” A fluffy golden mutt sweetheart the size of a breadbox, Astronaut Larry ran in circles around Bucky for ages, panting, smashing Bucky’s heart to smithereens. They took some selfies together that he meant to text Steve. Later.

Steve hums and says, “When don’t you?” which makes Bucky rub the top of his head against Steve’s cheek. Lean down to kiss the exposed skin next to Steve’s stretched-out shirt collar, falling short of his collarbone.

“I went in my room,” he whispers, lips-to-skin.

“You know I heard you. Not so sneaky as you think you are, Buck.”

“Yeah, yeah. Not a ghost at all, am I?”

“Poltergeist, maybe.”

He pecks Steve on the lips, and rubs their noses together. “Nah, that’s you, buddy. Wrecking shit and refusing to leave. But not the point. I went in my room. I  _ looked  _ at everything in there.”

“So?”

“So: I love you too.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Bucky huffs and takes Steve’s hand, the one he isn’t clutching in his like a kite string, guiding it down inside the sweater’s collar. He repeats, “I love you too, you fucking freak,” and Steve twists at the wrist. Gets the fabric in his fist so his knuckles are shoved up against Bucky’s nape. 

“Rude, Buck. And unprovoked, too.” He  _ tsk _ s. “You think any finishing schools do house calls?”

“I thought you were the finishing school that does house calls. Why are you in my house if you’re not here to finish me?” He flaps a hand at Steve. “Shoo. And come back when you’re Emily Post with a baseball bat stuck full of nails.”

“Y’know I oughta rip the collar right of your shirt. Knot it nice and snug around your throat instead.”

“I don’t know why you bought all those fancy collars if you’re just gonna wrap a rag around me and call it a day.” Steve hasn’t put any of them on him yet, even though it’s been weeks since Bucky found them.

“I didn’t buy you fancy collars.”

“Oh, my mistake. You bought fancy collars for the coffee maker and toaster. You bought fancy collars for Horace from Craigslist. You bought—”

Steve frowns at the neck of Bucky’s sweater, where it’s still pulled tight from his fist curled in it. “How do you know I bought you fancy collars?”

“Steve. Sweetheart. Baby. Steven. My dearly beloved dumbass  _ owner _ .” He blushes and ducks his head saying that one, but pushes through. If Steve has to be embarrassed, it’s only polite of Bucky to embarrass himself too. “You put them in the linen closet. Was—Was that a hiding place? The linen closet?”

“I put them under the sheets.”

“And I changed my sheets. I change my sheets every two weeks. Steve. Aw. Really?”

“Shut up.”

“Hey, it’s okay. I can’t be the stupid one here  _ all  _ the time. Fancy collars  _ and  _ mean embroidery. You’re spoiling me.”

“I didn’t give you mean embroidery. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Bucky stops holding his hand to put his arms around Steve instead, squeezing tight. A strap holding the sproinging umbrella of Steve’s body in place. He kisses Steve’s earlobe. Lays down a few more kisses, working up the ear’s bony curve.

“Right, like you didn’t buy me fancy collars. Got it. Smooth cover story. The jury buys it a hundred-percent. Hundred and fifteen.”

Steve says, “You’re infuriating, you notice that?” and starts pinching Bucky’s ass, one stinging pinch after another like a hungry horde of gnats and Bucky shrieks, wiggling in his grasp. Steve pauses to pull Bucky’s briefs down, exposing the top of his ass, pinching him a few times more, and then says, “Nah, actually,” and bends his knees and straight-up hoists Bucky over his shoulder. Bucky shrieks again, steadying himself with his left hand on Steve’s hip; he’s half-mooning the ceiling, and floppy as Steve starts down the hall carrying him. He’s got no right to any dignity; he’s an ugly fucktoy; he’ll suffer, and he kisses the small of Steve’s back.

  
  


-

  
  


“Home décor catalogue. Home décor catalogue. Home décor  _ magazine _ , again? They keep sending these I’m gonna start getting ideas.”

Steve emerges from the bathroom, drying his hands on his jeans, and says, “We better cut that off at the pass.” He grabs the magazine off the stack of mail in Bucky’s arms on his way into the living room. Takes one quick look at the name on the mailing label before rolling the thing up tight, so Bucky trails after him, hopeful. 

A  _ Religious Socialism _ newsletter addressed to Steve sits at the top of the stack now, and beneath that’s a grocery store circular. Settling down on the floor with his back supported by the couch, Bucky hands them both up to Steve, who’s thrown himself down in a mostly-horizontal sprawl, one foot on the cushions and his other leg kicked out, knee knocking Bucky’s ribs. 

“Thanks,” Steve says, setting the mail down on his chest, and then, “Move your head closer to me a sec.”

“Lazy.” His head’s not even out of reach. But he twists around into a position that’s a messy second-cousin-once-removed of kneeling. Elbow resting on Steve’s thigh, head floating above Steve’s crotch. If Steve snapped his thighs closed right now, he would be trapped there, helpless.

Barely moving his arm, Steve smacks him over the head with the home décor magazine. It  _ pop _ s loudly against his skull. Bucky wrinkles his nose affectionately before a happy shriek’s surprised out of him by a second blow catching his ear. Getting socked in the mouth with the magazine’s like getting backhanded by a giant Barbie doll—funny and startling and glamorous—and he stretches forward more in response to that hit so he can press his face to Steve’s stomach. Smush his bruisey-feeling mouth against Steve’s hard hip flexor. 

“Sweetheart,” he says, looking up at Steve through his lashes. The word comes out squashed. “Mmm,” he adds when Steve ruffles his hair.

Steve says, “It’s for a different guy than last time.”

“What is?”

“The magazine.  _ Two _ separate people’ve got their subscriptions sending to the wrong address.”

“Christ. Are people idiots or just real nice? Maybe they’re gifts.”

“Not good ones.”

Bucky kisses Steve’s hip and shifts, settling to sit how he was before. A little distracted by sifting through the remaining mail, he says, “What, you don’t wanna see how Instagram’s ‘revolutionizing the world of wallpaper?’” Pre-approval for a Target credit card; a copy of their electric bill even though he pays it online; some shit about changing their cable plan; and an envelope addressed to him.

“Not as much as you might think from lookin’ at me.” A slick-sounding  _ slap  _ as Steve throws the magazine at the storage armchair with too much force and it hits the wall instead. “Cody Hambleton of Wherever the Fuck He  _ Really _ Lives—probably not even Brooklyn—and I ain’t got much in common.”

“Poor Cody. He probably is here, bricked up in our bathroom wall or some shit.”

The envelope’s sturdy, good quality cream paper; a cartoon of Wonder Woman running in her flouncy skirt decorates the postage stamp. The mailing label bearing  _ JBB  _ plus their address in a typewriter font is vertically and horizontally centered on the envelope to a fault. And there’s no return address.

“Rest in peace in there, Cody,” Steve says. A loud rip as he mauls the newsletter envelope to get to the contents.

Bucky corrects him, “Rest in our piss,” which gets a snort from Steve. He reaches into one of his boots for a knife, and uses it to slit open his envelope’s flap. The letter inside’s the same quality as the envelope itself, folded into perfect thirds. When he smooths it open and flat to rest against his thigh, he sees the message is one sentence long. All spelled out in cut-and-pasted newspaper scraps:

_ I’M GOING TO  
_ _ HURT YOU A LOT! _

It’s not that he rereads it fifty-odd times so much as he’s transported to a world where nothing else exists, the same as he might while studying a painting. Or a long lingering shot on the television. A honeybee rolling around in ecstasy inside a flower’s pink mouth. Steve’s face.

_ I’M GOING TO HURT YOU A LOT _ happens to him. Surround sound, panorama.

He registers that the paper’s fragrant. Holds it close to his nose and sneaks a kiss to the word “I’M” in the process. It’s been dabbed with perfume. Lavender-scented. And the heady rush of the scent itself combines with the heady rush of Steve choosing lavender as a dumb joke to near about pop his head straight off his body. Send it sailing through the air like a champagne cork whacking God in the eye.

One letter he received when he was in Basic smelled like chocolate from, the P.S. explained, Steve rubbing a Hershey bar wrapper all over the paper. At the time, Bucky’d already set about the necessary work of putting his feelings away. Folding them small and shoving them into a drawer, so the chocolate-rubbed paper didn’t send any parts of him careening around the room; there wasn’t enough carbonation inside him to start with. But it gave him something new to put in his feelings drawer, on top of the folded piles. A potpourri sachet, keeping all his feelings fresh for when he needed them again. 

He folds the letter into its neat thirds. Tucks it away safe in its envelope, and rubs Steve’s knee. Looks over his shoulder and up. He says, “Steve, I’ve got a secret admirer.”

“Oh?” Steve’s eyes stay on the newsletter, his brow furrowed. “I’d keep it secret too if I’d done something humiliating as admiring you.”

Sudden want pangs searingly between his legs. Then the sensation evaporates. Not as in  _ disappears _ ; it floats upward and expands to fill the container of his stomach. “Guess my admirer’s real smart then.” He ducks his head to bite Steve’s kneecap.

  
  


-

  
  


Two days later, another letter comes. The same kind of envelope. Same stamp. Same typewriter font on the mailing label. Bucky realizes, standing outside their apartment door holding The mail under one arm and His mail in both hands, that Steve probably chose that font to spite him. Because he knows Bucky hates that imitation vintage shit.

Vintage Wonder Woman walks a fine line, mostly forgiven because her rounded cartoony features are vastly superior to and more endearing than the slick wannabe photorealistic look of modern comic books. This is an opinion of his that Steve’s intimately acquainted with.

The letter says, twelve-point font:

_ I’m going to ENJOY hurting you a lot. _

A catalogue falls to the floor from the mail pile wedged in Bucky’s armpit and he can’t be bothered to pick it up.

Steve rescues the catalogue later, chivalrous as ever, and even rolls it up to smack Bucky’s ass while laughingly telling him off for leaving their mail lying around where anyone can steal and read it, baiting their neighbors into committing a federal crime.

-

  
  


More letters arrive. Informing him that he should be terrified. That his skin’s gonna be one giant blue bruise like “those fucked up Smurf things.” That he’ll cry so hard his face will turn inside-out and Brooklyn will have its own Great Lake.

-

One Friday, four are delivered at once, each in a different color of pastel envelope. Lacy patterns line the edges of the flaps, hand-drawn with what looks like the white gel pens he gave Steve at Christmas. When Bucky slits them open with his boot knife, their insides are printed with photocopied newspaper pages. The letters themselves are on construction paper, written in crayon, one word each:

_ BLOOD!  _

_ HORROR!  _

_ SHAME!  _

_ DEATH! _

Bucky grins and folds the letters all up, returning them to their envelopes. Across the table, Steve’s pretending to be preoccupied with something on his phone. Four fucking letters at once. Will there be five next? Ten? Is Steve trying to engage in some kind of convoluted bondage scenario where he stuffs Bucky’s bedroom so full of letters there’s no room left for him to move?

After pushing in his chair, Bucky kisses the top of Steve’s head. He can see that all Steve’s doing on his phone is typing gibberish into a text message with the recipient field blank. One hand types while the other comes up to wrap around a lock of hair and yank, forcing Bucky to flinch and rise onto his toes, cawing like a crow. Steve pats him absentmindedly on the stomach. Smashes the keyboard with both thumbs.

Cheek on top of Steve’s head, Bucky says, “Did you read the Harry Potter books?” He stole the first two from the waiting room of a doctor’s office he was raiding for supplies, then returned them later that week. The next five he borrowed from libraries, all above-board, as long as “above board” doesn’t imply that the libraries had his real name on file.

“No.” Steve twists to see Bucky’s face, and Bucky gives him a good view. “Someone tried to make me once.”

“Oh, so you never will.”

“Yep.” One of his eyes gets squinty when he smiles.

“Never mind then. It was about the mail, but—” Bucky waves the letters at him. “I’ll just go put these between the pages of my diary with the rest.”

“You do that, you fucking dweeb.”

“Aw. Someone’s just jealous he’s not getting love letters.”

Sounding beyond pissed off, Steve mutters as Bucky’s leaving, “I get love letters every time you open your mouth,” and really, it’s hostile of him to just  _ say  _ things like that. It’s an act of aggression. A red flag for a troubled personality, flinging those kinds of sentiments around as though they don’t make Bucky want to die of embarrassment and then rise from the dead, throw on a white Kevlar veil, and get married on the spot. 

He moonwalks out of the room to go hide the letters under his floorboard.

-

A large manila envelope comes addressed to JBB, five Wonder Woman stamps smacked on haphazardly, way overboard, instead of the package having been properly weighed and paid for. Whatever’s inside shifts around, reminiscent, when he shakes it by his ear, of loose sand or sugar. The rest of the mail he leaves on the kitchen table, but the package accompanies him to his bedroom. Waits in the middle of his bed while he takes down his hair, hangs up his sweater, pries his boots off and grabs his knife in the process.

Then he knifes the envelope open. Bites his lip in contemplation. He could stick his hand in there first, spare himself a mess. He could pour a sample of the contents carefully into his cupped palm. 

For one hysterical second, he considers the possibility that Steve mailed him cocaine. Not something he’d ever rule out, but it seems unlikely unless he’s stepping his game up by threatening to frame Bucky for drug possession. That seems  _ extremely  _ unlikely.

He upends the envelope. Dirt pours from its mouth, forming a small pile on the floor. And he loses control of his face, open-mouthed, jaw shifting, tongue poking around in his cheeks. This is a million times better than sand. Better than pink sand, even. Better than sugar. They’ve  _ got  _ sugar, in a jar in the kitchen. Dirt they generally keep to a minimum around the house, per Bucky’s own demand, but  _ this _ . 

Squatting, he runs his right hand through the dirt, flattening and spreading the pile. He finds it uniformly fine. Silky, almost. No clumps, or sharp pebbles like baby teeth. This is dirt you could stick in an hourglass. Steve could stick it in an hourglass and pretend to be the Wicked Witch of the West trapping Bucky as Dorothy in the highest tower of his castle.

Rubbing a thin layer of dirt between forefinger and thumb, getting the grooves of his fingerprints filthy, he mutters, “It was already my fucking birthday, you idiot.” 

This is getting out of hand. If giving each other gifts is a competition, which it is, because why wouldn’t it be, then right now Steve’s the equivalent of building hotels on Boardwalk and Park Place while monopolizing the utilities and railroads in this town. Whereas Bucky, more or less, is trapped in jail with all his properties mortgaged.

“Well.” He turns the envelope over in his hands, smearing dirt on one of the Wonder Woman stamps, which he feels momentarily guilty about. But she’s a tough lady; she’ll be fine. “Guess you didn’t include a card.”

Which is strange enough that he stuffs his hand in the envelope to double-check; Steve isn’t much for abstract, and puzzling out the meaning behind a wordless pile of dirt is a little more complicated than deciphering something like “OH BOY! I MIGHT MURDER YOU AND BURY YOU IN DIRT!” scrawled inside a Hallmark _Congrats, Grad!_ card.

Yeah: a scrap of paper’s stuck at the bottom of the envelope, resistant to gravity but easily tugged free. Big, stenciled-looking red marker letters:

_ EAT IT. _

Bucky’s startled laugh is more of a bleating sheep noise than anything else. “Oh my fucking god. Christ.”

Obeying the paper is tempting. But he takes his marching orders from Steve, not from menacing anonymous pen pals. If Steve wants to make him eat dirt, then that needs to come through official channels, signed in triplicate, enforced by Steve’s hand on his skull, grinding his face into the ground.

Bucky scoops all the dirt into its envelope for ease of carrying it to the bathroom. Some clings stubbornly to the lines in his palm, so he darts his eyes around and then licks it up. Not terrible.

Right now he needs to focus on what matters: digging his way out of his jail cell with a plastic spoon, faking his own death to get out of paying his mortgages (easy; he’s done that before, if we’re being particularly elastic with our metaphors), and scamming Steve into handing over the deeds to Broadway and Park Place so that he can declare himself  _ clearly  _ winning. For the joy of that in and of itself, and the subsequent joy of Steve trying to send him right back to last place.

He begins by dampening the dirt enough to form it into a clod, which he leaves on Steve’s nightstand with an index card explaining, “FOR THROWING AT BUCKY.”

-

  
  


Steve, it seems, is perfectly happy to take his marching orders from anonymous notes. 

  
  


-

Bucky considers reusing one of the envelopes. The mint green number in particular, rubberstamped all over with smeared-at-the-edges hearts and flowers, seems appropriate. Torn neatly in half now, a poison control yuck face sticker held the flap closed, and the typed letter declared, “Been picking out toxic chemicals to use on you! Can’t wait.”

But re-gifting is bad form, and re-gifting a gift that was valued and appreciated is bizarre form. And anyway, Steve is a guy of straightforward tastes. Bucky prints out the Airbnb reservation confirmation at the library. Double-sided, to conserve paper. He folds it up small enough to fit in his back pocket.

He does doodle a few hearts in black ballpoint and write,  _ Yours, some stupid slut _ , in a patch of blank space, but that’s all the frills needed.

Stashing the bag of apples he bought on the way home in the crisper drawer, he says, “Can you close your eyes for me?”

“I don’t know.” Steve puts another clean glass away before closing the cabinet. “What’ll happen if I do?”

“I’ve got a surprise for you. It’s nice. But you gotta close your eyes to set the surprise mood.”

Steve says, “Fine,” but he doesn’t close his eyes. He pointedly widens them, then blindfolds himself with his hand. And Bucky trusts that they stay open under there because Steve is nothing but needlessly tenacious on principle.

“Geeze, you always gotta find a loophole, don’t you?”

“You want me to start letting you boss me around? No? Then yes, I always gotta find a loophole.”

“How do you know it’s a no? I could’ve nodded.”

“Much as I hate to say it, I’ve met you. Hurry up. What’s the surprise?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He gets the folded-up printout from his pocket and walks over to Steve, grabbing the hand that isn’t covering his eyes and putting the paper in his palm. He curls Steve’s fingers in over it. “Happy Anniversary.”

The corner of Steve’s mouth twitches. “Okay, I’m gonna look now.”

“Yeah, that’s the idea.”

“Fuck you.” His brow’s scrunched up, and he unfolds the paper like it’s butterfly-wing-fragile.

Bucky gives him time to frown at it. Long enough to read it twice backward and forward. Then he explains, “I’ve got vacation time at work, since I’m a real bigshot now. Sorta. And Sam’s supposed to be transitioning into taking over the Cap stuff anyway, right? So.” Steve’s eyes land on his, narrowed, and he’s smiling. “Any bat signals show up while you’re busy fucking me in a lake, he said he’ll take them.”

“You told him I’d be fucking you in a lake?”

“Yeah, Steve, that’s why I’m such a hit at parties: my complete lack of proper boundaries.”

“You told him  _ directly  _ we’d be innocently playing chess in a lake upstate?”

“I DM’d him on Twitter, in code, on an anonymous account, and you’re never gonna mention it again, all right?” In response, Sam messaged him the most recent sketches of his new uniform, with little reproductions of his Falcon wings on either side of the cowl and the big wings themselves patterned with stars.

Bucky replied, “Those tiny wings gonna be rocket-powered too?” and once he received the desired, “Fuck you, man,” he deleted the account.

Steve says, “Oh, I’m not?”

“His demand, not mine. He’s allowed to demand, ’cause he’s a normal, sane-ish person not under your stupid thrall. Less under your stupid thrall. Okay, under it in a completely different way.”

“And I’m the one obsessed with loopholes.” Steve bobs his head to the side, giving in. “What anniversary is this for again?”

“Oh, well, you bought me a, uh—” He snaps his fingers, trying to conjure the answer into being in front of him, then points proudly at Steve’s chest when he says, “pair of shoes. A new pair of shoes, seventy-five years ago today.”

“Is that right? You keep that in your head for seventy-five years?”

“What, you didn’t? These were nice shoes. They had, uh. Laces.  _ Sturdy  _ laces.”

“You’re full of shit.”

“Okay, then it’s the eightieth anniversary of the first time you ever shot a spitball at my head.”

“Uh-huh.”

It comes to him: “Three weeks since we first tried that new bubble tea place at the corner. How about that, then, smart guy? That one’s provable. I’ve got photos. In fact, I’ve got  _ texts _ .” He squirms his phone out of his pocket while Steve stands there watching, mouth squirming to match him, hands on hips. There’s a notification that he’s got a message from Steve.

It’s a photo of a pile of clothespins. That’s it. A stock photo of a pile of clothespins. Watermarked.

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “You were sexting me at 7:03 in the morning?”

“I was awake.”

“Okay, future reference: You can just come and put clothespins on me. I mean, I’d want you to wake me up first. But you don’t even have to be nice about waking me up—You could, you know, storm in with an air horn, shake me up a bit, get some clothespins on my ass or wherever, and we see if I can fall back asleep while you’re doin’ it.”

“That sounds rude of me.”

“Right, heavens forbid you be rude to me.” He picks up Steve’s hand and places the palm to his own cheek.

Steve scratches him lightly. In his ear, it’s crisp as cutting through paper. “Doesn’t sound fun then. I’m just putting clothespins on you while you go back to sleep?”

“It’s fun if you’re hell-bent on making sure I don’t  _ get _ to go back to sleep. I’ll be all muddled and whiny and begging you to let me.”

“I’ll take it under consideration.”

He slaps Bucky’s face. Not hard enough to turn his head, but hard enough to sound whip-like and send a sting spider-webbing across his cheek. It makes Bucky want to eat Steve’s entire hand in gratitude. He settles for mouthing wetly at the pad of fat beneath Steve’s little finger.

Steve smiles, approving. He says, “Good information to have. Now show me the fucking texts that prove it’s our bubble tea anniversary, jackass.”

He scrolls up to find a series of texts he sent to Steve three weeks ago today:

_ Steve the woman in front of us has a dog in her bag _

_ Steve it’s a pug I can hear it snorting it’s in her bag hiding? _

_ Steve stop looking at the menu look at your phone _

_ You already know you’re gonna order regular milk tea STEVE _

_ STEVE, THE DOG _

“See? Happy Anniversary. You ordered the milk tea. I’m a prophet.”

Just like he did when he saw the texts after they left the store with their drinks, Steve says, “Why would I have been looking at my phone?”

“Because it was buzzing. Because I needed you for a very urgent, serious matter.”

“What, noticing a dog?”

“Yeah, noticing the dog. So actually, it’s the three week anniversary of you cruelly ignoring me. And you know how I love to reward your cruelty.”

“It’s one of your more palatable qualities,” he agrees, and slaps Bucky again. A whip-crack sound, but Bucky thinks,  _ Ka-ching.  _

Bucky kisses his hand in reward. Moves in and kisses him on the lips. With their faces close together he asks quietly, “You’ll go then, right? I can cancel, but. We’ve never had a proper vacation. It sounds nice.”

Steve’s hand curls around the back of Bucky’s head, and he pulls him in for a longer, lazy kiss that Bucky moans into. Pulling away, Steve says, “Of course I’ll go. You kidding? Buck, I get to make you crawl in the dirt.  _ Outside  _ dirt. I wouldn’t give that up for anything.” Softer, he says, “Thank you,” and Bucky says, “Oh, well, you know,” and Steve looks like he does know, yeah. 

  
  


-

  
  


The sound of glass shattering.

Weeks ago, he stopped sleeping with a knife under his pillow—an experiment, an experiment that  _ had  _ been going fine—but he gropes for it on instinct as he shoots upright. Bedsheet, tabletop, nothing. Delirious, he considers swinging the pillow like a weapon, like he isn’t constantly armed with his own arm, a more effective—

Steve’s arms are around him and Steve’s saying, “Hey, it’s okay. It’s okay,” brusque and fully confident. Steve’s arms are around him so quickly, like he was right there, not sleeping soundly down the hall—but. The glowing clock face on his desk says it’s 3:10, so sadly enough, that’s not out of the ordinary. A restless, live-wire Steve, maybe loitering in Bucky’s doorway, there when it happened. When. It?

His brain’s muddled, despite the sudden sharpness of being woken. He should have gone into high alert, but Steve’s holding him tight, kissing the hinge of his jaw, and he’s safe and half-asleep. Clarity and logic dance out of reach; his bones liquidate. He lets his eyes close. Steve is there, and Steve’s heartbeat is slow and steady, so nothing can really be wrong, and Bucky’s heart slows to match.

Two calm people: their couple’s Halloween costume.

Steve kisses him on the chin. On the temple. He turns Bucky’s head with one finger at his jawline, and kisses him on the lips, chaste. Bucky’s  _ mmm _ s, leaning into it, and Steve pulls back. Hush-voiced, he says “There’s a lot of broken glass on the floor right now, and I don’t want you getting hurt. So you’re going to stay up on the bed, all right? You’re going to stay here while I take care of that.” He presses a final kiss to Bucky’s hair, right above his ear. “You hear me?”

“I hear you.” It comes out froggy. He clears his throat. “What the fuck happened?”

“Well, looks like someone wanted to tell you something.” Gentle, he steers Bucky’s head by the hair, and points at the thing on the floor he’s directed him to face.

It’s a brick.

The hand in Bucky’s hair skritches his scalp, fingers spreading and scrunching rhythmically, like an anemone. Crisp, soothing sound, and the sensation would make Bucky’s shoulders drop all the way to the floor if they weren’t screwed into his body. But also, there’s a brick on the floor, and it has a folded piece of paper tied around it with twine.

He wants to stretch half off the table and reach down to get it, but he’s being good and staying up there for Steve. So he says, “Can you hand it to me, please?” A voice from the crawlspace in his head corrects him— _ May you _ , but polite grammar’s more for actual sex, not for Steve’s erotic late night performance art.

“You need me to read it to you too?”

“Hey, that’s a federal offense. I just want you to be my delivery boy.”

Steve laughs. “Sure. Hang on, your majesty.” Glass crunches under his boots as he stands up and grabs the brick. To hand it off, he bows his head, going into a deep lunge as an approximation of getting down on one knee without risking cutting his knee up through his pajama pants. The brick sits in his outstretched hands like a wedding ring on a velvet pillow.

Bucky grins at him. “Thank you, Sir Rogers.” And he takes the brick, lowering his legs into a pretzel so he can sit it in his lap.

“‘Sir’ or ‘Rogers,’ Buck. You don’t gotta say both.”

“Yeah, all right. I bet I’ll start calling you ‘sir’ any cold day in Hell now.”

“I’ll keep an eye on the weather report for Hell, then.” Like he hasn’t explicitly said before that he didn’t want that, even if he visibly got a small kick out of it when Bucky would nonchalantly  _ sir  _ him in the war.

That was different; the appeal, at least for Bucky, was the public reality of it. The accepted and mundane codification of genuine private emotion. In civilian life, outside of the occasional joke, it would be an artifice. Ungainly.

Steve musses Bucky’s hair, then walks away. More glass crunches under his boots, and he disappears behind the Pac-Man machine. When he comes out, he’s holding their dust pan and broom. Coincidentally conveniently stashed.

Bucky shakes his head and returns to the matter of the brick, serenaded by the crystalline shushing sounds of sweeping. The twine’s knotted tight, and in different circumstances he might have a ball picking at the knot with his nails and teeth until it loosened. Satisfaction at a problem well-solved would curl up sleepily in his stomach.

But these aren’t those circumstances. He slips the paper free. It’s graph paper, folded into perfect fourths aligned with the lines, and he unfolds it with care. Neat, red-inked block letters fill the whole page:

__ I’M GOING TO TAKE  
__ YOU. NOWHERE  
_ TO HIDE. HAHAHA.  
_ __ BE AFRAID!!!!!!!!!!!!

That’s it. No sign-off even. No whiff of cologne or chocolate or lavender. As love letters go, it’s terrible. It’s perfect.

“Steve.”

“Yes?”

“ _ Steve _ .” Laughter bubbles up inside him, too big to contain. For the bed to contain, even. Too big for this room, for the entire apartment, fuck. “You threw a fucking  _ threatening  _ brick through—what, a fucking sheet of glass to wake me up. Are you serious?” He snorts, ugly and happy.

“What? Excuse me. Looks to me like I’m the guy who’s here to comfort you after someone else threw a brick through your window—”

“Yeah, my unshattered window.”

Louder, Steve continues, “And now I’m the guy here to sweep up this mess, and you don’t seem very grateful.”

“Oh, I’m grateful, believe me. I’m plenty glad. Come back over here, please? So I can show you how grateful.” 

“When I’m done sweeping. Be patient and read your letter.”

“I did already. My secret admirer’s coming to take me. Nowhere to hide. Hahaha. Says to be afraid.”

“So read it again. You’ll read the same book ten times in a row. You can read that note a few more times while I work.”

“I love you so much.”

“Yeah well. Unfortunately, it’s mutual.” Bucky’s night vision stops just short of letting him see Steve blush from here, but he can imagine.

He turns the brick over, rubbing his right thumb along the surface, treasuring the roughness. The corners are chipped, but it’s clean. Too clean, like Steve gave it a bath in preparation for its date with Bucky’s floor. It’s embarrassment-red. 

Embarrassment-free, Bucky kisses it. Just a peck.

Watching Steve sweep isn’t re-reading the note, and so not very obedient, but he wants to. Revels in the purpose with which Steve herds all the glass, making the floor safe for Bucky to walk on. Sit on, kneel on, lie on, crawl across. Steve’s shirt has a hole in the shoulder and a heart on the front. What looks like bedhead is probably from running his hands through his hair and pulling it in thought as he planned exactly the right timing and angles to make this good.

Bucky says, “Can you believe they don’t require postage for bricks thrown through ‘windows?’” and Steve starts to interrupt, but Bucky says over him, “Communism is here at last.”

Steve makes an ugly laughing noise. An ugly clenched-tooth laughing face and ducks his head. “You’re a fucking idiot.”

“Yeah, and you’re done sweeping. I wanna hold your hand, come on, please?”

“Needy little bitch.” But he gives the floor a final once-over before leaning the broom and pan against the machine’s front and striding over to Bucky, hand already extended like they’re being introduced.

Bucky takes it, and sweeps his thumb across Steve’s skin. Back and forth. “This good?” Steve asks. His grip is firm.

“It’s good. But now I wanna be in bed with you.”

“Your needs keep escalating, huh?”

“Hey, I said ‘want.’ You don’t gotta do anything. Just voicing my interests.”

“Your interest is me in bed with you.”

“Oh, it sure is.” He looks up at Steve with wide eyes, mouth upturned at the corner “Please.”

“You know the answer’s yes. Let me past.” He unnecessarily shoves Bucky to the side to clamber onto the table and lie down facing the doorway.

Bucky stretches, encouraging a yawn to rise from his depths, and lies down, curling up to be spooned. The brick rests beneath his ankle. Steve’s fingers drum at his stomach. “You should sleep here with me, I think,” Bucky says. “In case this guy comes back. No one’s gonna take me, they see Steve Rogers got me already.” He picks up Steve’s hand, folding it into a fist. Kisses his way along the knuckles.

“Is that so? Won’t want my damaged goods?”

Bucky scoffs. “Excuse you. Your well-taken-care-of goods. Anything wrong with the product’s just inherent, not damage you did.”

“Mmm. All right. My fucked up, coddled goods. You sure you wouldn’t rather I call you my fucked up, coddled bads while we’re at it?”

Bucky laughs. “Shut up. I know my homographs. I know it’s not nice.”

“That’s right. Your vocabulary’s one of your least offensive traits. Completely out of proportion to the rest of your brains.”

“Mmm. You’re flirting with me.”

“Yep.” 

“Why would you go and do a thing like that?”

“Well.” Steve sighs loudly. “I know it’s hard to tell, since relative to you I’m such a genius—”

“Definitely—”

“But really, I’m very stupid. Irredeemably. That’s why I’m stuck mooning over some whiny googly-eyed Sesame Street reject. The world’s most mediocre cracker jack prize.” Bucky’s heart squirms; his face warms; he lets out a low whine, imagining Steve reaching into a bag and finding him in there, frowning because he didn’t get something better. “The snowman someone made out of dirty sludge and brought to life. With carrots for the nose  _ and  _ the dick.”

Bucky hides his face in the sheets. His body is hot and his blood is loud and being this in love is painful, sometimes, in a perfect way, like Steve’s nails pinching his tongue. “Stoppit.”

“You’ll make me with what army?”

“No army. I’m defenseless.”

“Yeah, you are.” Steve smacks a kiss to his left shoulder. It registers as a gentle buzz. “But that was the best one I had for now. Go to sleep, Carrot Dick. I’ll be the guard dog this time.”

“Don’t eat my dick off in my sleep,” Bucky mumbles.

“We’re living in the future, Buck. I don’t gotta eat rabbit food ever anymore.”

“Sure.” He can feel his tongue lazing, words blurring. “Got Hot Pockets in the freezer, you wanna chomp. Leave my rabbit parts outta it.”

“Don’t know what the fuck you’re saying, fuckface.” A hand petting his hair. Firm and kind. He’s dissolving, he thinks. Sugar in scalding tea, sweeter for Steve. “Do what I say. Go to sleep.”

He tries to say, “Aye aye,” but it’s just grunts.

Close to his ear, Steve huffs in the particular pitch that means he’s smiling on one side, amused, and he keeps petting. A guard dog guarding a dumber dog, weaker dog, gentler dog; he’ll tear out intestines with his teeth if that’s what it takes to do his guard dog job and keep Bucky safe. Bucky’s had a lot of doubts in his life, even doubts about Steve before, but never about that. Not once since he was eight years old.

-

The coffee maker beep-beep-beeps. Bucky’s been bent over the stove, staring at the digital clock face and the blank spot where a temperature would flash if he were baking. Not quite dozing. Grateful that he scrubbed the stove clean just last night, so there’s no risk of getting his gingham work shirt dirty. Now, he pushes himself up off his elbows, turning, and he starts in surprise, because it’s so early, even for him, even on a workday, and yet.

There’s Steve, leaning in the doorway with his arms crossed, shirt rucked partially up his stomach, eyes still blinking away sleep. He smiles at Bucky and says in a sandpapery voice, “What’s cooking, shitty-looking?”

Bucky stuffs his lower lip in his mouth, biting halfway down his chin, and his shoulders jump with a laugh. His hands squeeze tight around the oven door handle behind him, seeking touch and solidity, an anchor, so he doesn’t float away, buoyed by sappy gratitude for his life. 

“Nothing yet, hot stuff. Well.” He inclines his head toward the coffee machine. “Coffee.” Steve doesn’t always drink it; doesn’t even usually drink it, but Bucky always makes enough for two, in case. It’s wasteful, he knows, but worth it for the times Steve does pour himself a mug, sighing with thanks. “Might just have toast. Or—We got raisins? I could have peanut butter toast with raisins. Celery with peanut butter and raisins too. Ants on a log.”

“Mmm.” Steve steps into the sunlight streaming through their gauzy curtains (they’ve got the windows tinted, to keep out prying, binocular-enhanced eyes). It makes his hair bright as a fluffy chick, and his eyes eerily pale when he turns his face toward the window. “Not what I’m talking about.” He gets close enough to put his hands on Bucky’s hips, and Bucky lets go of the oven door to put his hands on Steve’s shoulders.

Without warning, Steve spins them, and dips Bucky, forearm solid under his spine. The ends of Bucky’s loose hair sweep the floor, and he giggles as the blood goes to his head, and kisses Steve when he’s been righted. Carefully, Steve kisses him back. Licks into his mouth, then pulls away.

“What, then?” Bucky asks. “Not being literal? Asking how I am?”

“I’m always asking how you are. But I mean I’m not asking what you’re cooking for you. I’m asking what you’re cooking for me.” He stares hard into Bucky’s eyes.

“Oh, yeah?” He pushes at Steve’s shoulder, smiling. “What makes you think I’m cooking anything for you?”

“Nothing before. But I kinda just told you to. Which means you are now.”

“Oh, my mistake, not understanding that. Asking what I  _ am  _ cooking you is definitely the same as saying I should.”

“Oh,  _ my  _ mistake for thinking you were smart enough to understand the implication.” He puts his hands on Bucky’s cheeks and squishes them together so his lips bulge forward, making it harder to breathe through his nose, and he feels like a big slimy catfish Steve caught in the river. “I’ll make sure to spell it out clearly for you next time. Using little words. And pictures.” He simpers, “Is that what you need?”

Bucky nods, and rubs Steve’s downy earlobe with his thumb. Then Steve’s hands are gone from his face, and Steve’s kissing the wrist by his ear, right over the pulse, before turning to pour himself coffee.

“What does his majesty want me to cook him then?”

“Eggs. Fried. As many as we’ve got.”

“As many as we’ve got.” He isn’t sure how many that is, but it’s a stupid request no matter what. Specifics matter. Specifics matter to Steve most of all.

“That’s what I said, isn’t it?” He pours a revolting amount of coconut non-dairy creamer in his mug. That’s just for him. They’ve had the bottle for two years. “I need a lot of protein if I wanna keep my strength up for throwing you around. Eggs. Fried. As many as we’ve got. Now get to it.” 

Bucky side-eyes him, but gets to it. It's not often that Steve makes him cook, and when he does, there's typically an added catch. Like duct tape binding his knees, or oven mitts he can't take off his hands. He likes to cook for Steve, but he likes helping Steve cook more, doing little useful things. Fruit needs rinsing. Knives need to be taken from the rack and handed over. Someone needs to kiss behind Steve’s ear. Pasta water should always be salted.

These are the constant imperatives the universe sends him. When he thinks about praying, and hearing from God in turn, these are the kinds of things he thinks about. God’s not going to send him any earth-shattering messages; Bucky’s not deluded that he’s that important in the grand scheme of things, at least not these days. The answers to his prayers are these nudges, these bullet points: the urge to boil water for tea; a spray of tulips in a window box turning his head when he’s beginning to retreat inside himself; the shape of an “I love you,” said to Steve, appearing fully formed in his mouth. 

Bucky opens the icebox. He takes out the egg carton and holds it one-handed, cocked hip stopping the door from shutting. The carton’s weight is somehow wrong. Suspiciously unbalanced. He lifts the lid.

He makes a noise like a stepped-on cat, and from the other side of the door, Steve says with minimal interest, “Something wrong?”

Eleven things are wrong, and they’re all miniature plastic reproductions of Bucky’s head, frowning determinedly up at him from their egg carton pockets (the twelfth pocket does contain a real egg). But Bucky takes the hint from the apathy in Steve’s voice and says, “No. Of course not.”

They’re all from the same line of Howling Commandos action figures, released about around when Steve’s museum exhibit went up, he thinks. Bucky saw them for the first time in a Wal-Mart he’d gone in for clothes and rations, but the first time he saw them in a store window, he was holding Steve’s hand.

He tugged to get Steve’s attention, and nodded at them. “I look like that?”

Steve squeezed his hand. “Of course not.” He whispered in Bucky’s ear, “You’re nowhere near that pretty, are you?” and Bucky turned, urgently, to kiss him on the cheek. Snow shook free of his hair and melted when it hit Steve’s skin.

Molded plastic hair. One eye winked shut for sighting down the rifle’s barrel. And the mouth is too big for the face. He’s nowhere near that pretty. The angry little decapitated plastic Buckies all wink at him, bringing him in on the joke.

He says, "There's only one egg in here," to see how Steve’s gonna play it.

"All right, then make me one egg. What's the problem?"

"You want a single egg? An egg’s worth of protein for throwing me around?" But he’s already taking it out and sliding the carton full of Buckies back into the icebox. Like into a morgue drawer. But most people in morgue drawers haven’t got clone friends to keep them company, so honestly, his heads should be grateful for their circumstances.

"What did I just say?"

"To make the egg." He closes the icebox.

"Is it your problem whether I want it or not? Or is it your problem to do what I tell you?"

"Oh it's definitely my problem to do what you tell me. Biggest thorn in my side I've got."

Steve raises his coffee to his mouth and his eyebrows to higher up on his face, and smacks Bucky hard on the ass. Bucky wants to frown at him, but that's not under his control. He thinks he's probably smiling, but it mostly feels like his mouth's a big smear of paint across his face.

Steve sips his coffee, breathes out,  _ Ahhh _ , when he's done, and says, "Stop talking back. Stop dilly-dallying. Make my goddamn egg."

Bucky salutes him, not even sloppily, and gets out the butter and a frying pan. "Y'know," he says as the butter starts to melt, "if you're gonna make a habit of this, we should get one of those one-egg pans. You seen those?"

"Seen ’em where?" Steve's pulled out a chair and he's seated facing Bucky, his legs spread obnoxiously. One elbow's propped up on the chair back, the other on his knee. The hot coffee mug's pressed to his face. It’ll leave a pink splotch, and that always gets Bucky going, seeing marks on Steve from everyday things and knowing that if he were the one looking like that, it would be ’cause he’d been smacked for getting out of line. 

“The grocery store. Just one egg. ’Bout the size of a DVD.” He makes a circle with his hands to demonstrate. “Though some are fun shapes, like uh. Animal heads. Hearts and stars.”

The butter's melted and sizzling. This is Steve's last chance to take the egg out of Bucky's hand and throw it at him, if that's what he's been working up to. If that's not the second catch here, Bucky can't guess what is, unless Steve wants to throw wet  _ fried _ egg in his face. Either way, he’ll have to change before work, which is annoying, but acceptable if this is why. Both for the eggy experience and because having something to bitch about might energize him.

But when he looks between the sizzling butter and Steve, Steve continues sitting there, drinking coconut-flavored coffee, so that answers that. 

He knocks the egg against the side of the pan. The shell cracks easy as accidentally punching a hole in the wall in his sleep. Shampoo gushes out.

He shrieks.

Now the pan's full of butter and shampoo, bubbling, and it's slimy all over his hand. Not thinking, he uses that hand to turn the stove off, and has to fumble with the slippery dial, but then the blue flame's swallowed into nothing, and he moves the pan to the counter to cool down. It's Steve's shampoo at least, something cheap and orange with a sweetly chemical scent. If Steve wasted a drop of Bucky’s thirty dollar hydrating minty bullshit, Bucky would wring his neck.

Bucky whispers, “Shit,” and notices something else in the pan. A scrap of paper like from a fortune cookie. He plucks it out, and unfurls it. The paper’s translucent from soaking in shampoo, almost rips under his touch, but the ink Steve used was waterproof. The word scrawled on the paper is very clear:

_ THREAT _ .

There’s no noise adequate to express how that takes all of the ever-present fuzzy fear and sadness and uncertainty buried beneath his other thoughts and replaces it with cool water. Ocean waves lapping, smoothing the sand. So he snorts and says, "You fucking bastard."

"I what? What did you call me?" Steve puts his mug on the table. There’s the pink splotch, marking him as the one who does the marking around here. The one who wrings figurative necks. He looks so affronted, committed to the ignorant act, and Bucky can’t help but become bubbly, slimy, cheap, sweet.

He smiles at Steve, and waves a dismissive hand. "Naw, not you, honey, of course not. It's that damn secret admirer again. How he got into our home I'll never know."

"He did? Well that's a problem. What do you think we should do about that?" Steve comes over and puts his arms over Bucky's shoulders from behind. Puts his face in the crook of Bucky's neck, and Bucky reaches up to take one of Steve's dangling hands. In his not-slippery left hand, because he’s gracious like that. He just wipes the shampoo-covered hand off on Steve’s pajama pants. 

"You've got a trusty drool factory right here, don'tcha? Trusty security service at your service."

"I don't know about trusty. Loyal, maybe, but acts up like a motherfucker."

“Don't I? Still, wouldn't hurt to have me on front door duty too.”

Steve begins walking them backward, and Bucky goes with. Said in his ear: "You know we can't put you in the hallway. And no one's breaking in using the knob on this side."

"Hmm. What if you, uh.” Steve sits, and pulls Bucky into his lap, so Bucky’s sitting with his thighs perpendicular to Steve’s, calves kicked out and disappearing beneath the table. “Oh, you can stuff a washcloth in my mouth.” He drapes his arm over Steve’s shoulder. “Get that all sopping and then smear it on the door. Very incognito."

Steve wrinkles his nose. “Disgusting, Buck. It’s good. Keep spit-balling.” He grins at his own joke, and Bucky pointedly rolls his eyes, smiling too.

“And I could get the floor in front of the door all wet. On this side, I mean. Extra precaution. I’m not certain, on account of how this is such a new scientific field, but he might not be able to cross over. Like a vampire with running water.”

“Definitely worth a shot. I like it. Aw.” He cups the back of Bucky’s skull, rubbing little circles with his fingertips. “Look at you.” He says like he’s talking to a puppy who just shook hands on command, “Who’s not the stupidest boy on earth, huh?” Bucky closes his eyes and turns his head, trying to hide, but there’s nowhere to go. Steve switches to cupping his ear tightly, holding him in place. His tone gets more encouraging. “Come on, boy. Who is it? Who’s not a completely irredeemable idiot? Who can do an okay job sometimes? Huh?” 

Bucky whimpers. He opens his eyes to scowl at Steve, but he can feel how relaxed his face is. How much more pathetic he must look than he means to. “Steve,” he says.

“Aww. No, that’s the wrong answer, sweetheart. Who is it? Come on. Let me give you a hint.” He kisses Bucky on the mouth, tasting like his horrible creamer. Lingering and brushing their lips together. In a normal tone, he whispers, forehead pressed to Bucky’s, “Come on. Say it for me. Okay?”

Bucky bites Steve’s bottom lip. Not enough to hurt. Grounding himself. He says, “Me.” He swallows. “I can do an okay job sometimes.”

“And?”

“I’m not the stupidest boy on.” Another swallow. “Earth—Steve, please.” Please what, he doesn’t know, but he knows he’s on the verge of trembling, of sobbing, so suddenly, too easily. His body’s the threat-filled egg, seconds away from cracking on the frying pan’s edge.

Steve says, “Yeah, okay, all right, come here,” and grabs Bucky closer, forces Bucky’s head down onto his chest. “Here we go, dumbass. You’re fine, Buck. Thank you. You’re fine?”

“I’m fine. I’m completely fine. Honest. Fine and normal.” He breathes in the sweat-and-detergent smell of Steve’s shirt and neck. He is fine. He still would have been fine if he’d trembled and sobbed. There’s time before he has to leave. He’s up so early, his body having jolted him out of a nightmare where he was asphyxiating on cotton candy, his whole head covered in pink fluff, unable to see the menacing animated carnival duck target he was trying to shoot with a real gun. But Steve is warm. Steve has a hand up Bucky’s shirt and is scratching his hips.

Steve says, “Good. You better be.”

“Actually.” Bucky rearranges himself so his cheek rests on Steve’s shoulder, both his hands in his lap, and Steve turns his head, chin brushing Bucky’s nose.

“What’s that?”

“I mean, I’m fine now, of course. A big strong hero’s got me, but I didn’t even tell you the worst of what happened by the stove.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mmhmm. My secret admirer didn’t just fuck that egg up. You know what else he did too?”

“What’s that? He didn’t hurt you, did he?”

“Well he scared me real bad. He did. Can I tell you?”

“You better.” Steve’s voice drops deeper, sterner. “You should have told me when it happened.”

“I know. I’m sorry. But. He left a bunch of little dolls of me in that egg carton. Of my  _ head _ ! I think it was a threat.” Bucky gasps theatrically, and Steve snickers in his ear.

“Oh my. Dearest me. Now we  _ really  _ need to take extra security precautions. We’ll have to increase productivity down at the drool plant so there’s enough to go around. You haven’t been making nearly enough as it is. I was looking at the graphs and you’re doing abysmally.”

“Sorry. You know I’m old and rusty.”

“That’s right, but it’s no excuse. You need to be drooling at least three times as much per day. What do you think we should do about that?”

Bucky sits up and stares into Steve’s face, deathly serious. "Please say I can get mandatory bedtime fistings." 

“If you’re good.”

He grunts in protest. “That’s an unfair standard to hold me to.”

“If I start being fair to you, it’s ‘cause I’ve been abducted and replaced.”

“Better be. I’d rather rescue you from aliens than have to get a divorce.” He lifts Steve’s hand to kiss the thin dorsal skin. Mouthing at the visible veins. “You want me to cook you anything for real?”

“No, I’m good. Just gonna grab cereal before my run.” He kisses Bucky’s cheek. “Go make your ants on a log.”

“Maybe just toast. I don’t know if we’ve got raisins.”

“We’ve got raisins. Eat your insects like a good boy if you want your bedtime fisting.”

“You’re a pervert.” Bucky swings himself up off of Steve’s lap, and Steve pats him on the ass.

“Yep. That’s my primary trait.”

“Primary trait’s your schnozz. Give it due credit.”

He makes and eats his ants on a log while Steve reads him snippets of the news off his phone. He kisses Steve goodbye, missing, in the vertiginous way that occasionally captures him, the shape of a hat in his hand, clutched to his chest, to be placed on his head when they part. 

He goes to work in the shirt he pulled on at four a.m., looking like a picnic blanket, clean as mountain air, like nothing happened.

**-**

His bedtime fisting is slow and luxurious. He gets it at both ends. First: Steve’s fingers working into his ass while he tries to hold himself still on all fours on his bedroom floor, boxers at his knees, a cereal bowl positioned beneath his hanging head to collect any drool. There’s no roleplaying, no machinery talk; it’s his hole getting fisted, not his hatch, and there’s no nozzle because Steve isn’t acknowledging his dick at all, leaving it in peace, hard against Bucky’s tank top, staining the black fabric by drooling in tandem with his mouth.

When his whole hand’s finally inside Bucky, sliding in tucked up tight into a missile shape along with what feels like a bathtub’s full of lube he’s so wet, squelching so loud, Steve says, “How does such a little thing like this suck me up so well, Buck?”

Bucky contracts around him, pulling him in, and his walls are sensitive from how long Steve spent opening him, and he mewls, shakes his head, shuddering. He hasn’t said anything but, “Please,” in what’s either been five minutes or five hours and it’s hard to remember what other shapes language comes in.

“Huh?” Steve says. “Come on, Bucky. Your hole was so tiny and closed up tight when we started. I thought it might not even let me in. Of course—” He laughs— “not that I’d allow that, right? You haven’t got any not letting me in privileges, have you?” And his hand expands, shifting into a fist, slowly stretching Bucky wider, asking more of him.

“No,” Bucky gasps, trying to think around the body-crammed-full-of-fireflies sensation of Steve’s knuckles shifting. His hole clutches Steve’s wrist, rim fluttering, needy, like it’s on a date to a horror movie with Steve and scared in the dark, seeking reassurance. “None of those. Not sucking you all in wouldn’t. Not okay.” He whimpers, and shakes his head harder. “Not an option.”

Steve’s an unstoppable force, and Bucky’s an object in desperate need of moving. An object that lives to be moved, and so of course he’ll open up, take anything, no matter what.

“That’s right.”

Steve’s not thrusting at all, which is for the best. Just being filled up so thoroughly has got him hard as his left arm, twitching and dripping, hot pleasure rippling through his whole body. When he asked if he was coming tonight, Steve said, “Don’t tell me your semen’s got anti-theft properties now too, Buck.” Any more movement back there from Steve—god forbid, Steve’s knuckles nudging at his prostate—and Bucky will have to give a pretty convincing argument for the security-enhancing utility of the come all over the floor if he doesn’t want to be in trouble. 

But need twists in his gut, and he pushes back in spite of himself, until Steve grabs his nipple through his tank top and tweaks it. “Hey,” he says, over Bucky’s whine. “Behave and take what you’re given, yeah?”

“Sorry. Yeah. Fuck. Please, Steve. Steve.” He licks his lips and finds his tongue obscenely wet, feels like he’s been making out with himself. So he hocks and spits into the bowl. Three times. Not nearly enough yet, that plus the few more casual strings of drool he let fall from his lips while Steve worked him open. 

“Aw, you getting wet up there already? We haven’t even started on  _ that  _ hole. It’s a lot less small and cute than this one, isn’t it?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Isn’t it?” Steve tweaks the same nipple and Bucky keens, sniffles and blinks hard, tearing up.

“Yeah, sorry, fuck. Not small at all. I’ve got a big mouth. No wonder I give you so much lip.”

A thick snort escapes Steve. “Fuck off,” he says, and carefully rotates his wrist, so his knuckles rub at new spots inside Bucky, make him gasp and clench up hard, which means even _more_ , more incomprehensible nervous feedback, and Steve spits on the stretched rim of his hole. Bucky makes every effort to only twitch his hips forward, not wanting to seem like he’s trying to get himself fucked deeper. He only wants to take what he’s been given. “You trying to tell me you can’t help mouthing off, Buck? What, I should just let it go ’cause it’s not your fault your ugly gaping fish mouth’s big enough to eat half the city? That what you’re sayin’?”

“No, Steve, fuck. If I can’t help it, that’s still no reason not to try and train me up better. I know that.”

“That’s right.” Steve pushes his tank top up some, stroking his bare back, and Bucky hums, letting his eyelids droop. Steve’s fist sits still inside of him, solid, unavoidable. All Bucky’s nerves are pulled taut as just-tuned violin strings, and Steve’s fist is a rosined bow drawn knifelike over them. “Maybe it’s futile, but I still gotta do what I can to teach you better manners.” Still stroking his skin, gentle. “How should I do that tonight, you think?”

“The way you said you would. What do you think?” Steve doesn’t even reprimand him verbally; he reaches under and twists his nipple, the same nipple, again, but doesn’t relent, holding it twisted, nails biting in, waiting for Bucky to self-correct. “Sorry, sorry, didn’t mean that.” His hole’s tightening around Steve, mind fuzzing with static, dick throbbing and drooling, and his nipple’s beaming out burning pain like radio waves. “I meant—Stop it up with your fist please? Plug me up in here so I can’t. Talk back? And I can. Um. Do my job. Drool job. Steve, please? Get me wet?”

Steve lets go of his nipple. Bucky exhales. Steve says, “Of course, Buck!” and kisses Bucky between the shoulder blades. “Already told you I would, stupid. Just give me a minute. This is tricky.” His hand shifts inside Bucky as he stretches his other arm out, playing with the angles. Bucky’s hips squirm in response, and he groans, breathes loudly through his nostrils. Then Steve’s knocking on his nose. “Open up.”

Steve’s bent fingers pop in easily between his waiting lips. The middle finger’s major knuckle scrapes against his teeth on the way, a tall man hitting his head on a doorway before ducking inside and finding that the ceiling’s an acceptable height. The whole hand forces into Bucky halfway to the wrist before his gag reflex tries to kick it out. His tongue surges upward, laving Steve’s skin. His abs clench and unclench violently in rhythm with his tongue, and his eyes are damp as grass in the morning. He’s already desperate to take a full breath. And Steve lets him gag, slippery slurping sounds muffled. Lets him think the next spasm of his abs might thrust him forward to take Steve in more, to choke him properly, and then slips his fingers out.

Yanks his hand away so that when Bucky, on instinct, pushes huge globs of saliva from his mouth, they land in the bowl. His eyes get wetter, and he blinks hard, spits more, and Steve says, “Wish I could do something about the disgusting slobber on my hand. It’s no good to me here.” He wipes the spit off on Bucky’s cheek, and Bucky leans into the touch, which leaves with a sticky sound. A cool wet patch. “Think there’s a vacuum that’ll suck it up and deposit it in the bowl for us?”

His voice has dropped half its fighting weight when he says, “Isn’t that. Me?”

“Nah. See—” The fist re-enters. Not as far as before. Fingers scraping on Bucky’s teeth, the thumb tucked in and stroking his tongue’s side. “I stick it in you, it gets wet  _ again.  _ I can never leave all of you behind. I’m permanently contaminated.” When he pulls out this time, a thin strand of drool drips down Bucky’s chin into the bowl, and Steve holds the back of his hand in front of Bucky’s eyes. The skin’s spit-shined. “See that? Some of your residue always comes with.”

Nodding, Bucky says, “Like glitter. Never goes all the way a—waghuhunem.” Now Steve fucks his mouth with shallow thrusts, his hand a pigeon’s bobbing head.

“Don’t flatter yourself, Buck. Glitter? You that glamorous?” Bucky’s tongue slides between two of the fingers. A hot, slick crease where Steve tastes like salt. “I was thinking soot. Or those ancient diseases under the permafrost. Goddamn perennial in the worst way.”

Which is accurate; they both are, and what’s born as laughter in Bucky’s throat blooms quickly into gagging. His shoulders roll forward. His body tries to convince him there’s a snake making its way up his esophagus. His tongue and the motion of his head force the fist out with a sneezing sound, and Steve places his sticky palm on Bucky’s neck while the bowl collects all that new saliva. 

“What happened there, nitwit?”

Bucky clears his throat. “Laughed.”

“Aw, am I that funny?”

Bucky shrugs. “Sometimes. Accidentally, I bet.” He doesn’t so much lift his heavy head as roll it to the side, and blink up at Steve. “Your voice is pretty funny.”

For the first time in a while, Steve’s got enough freedom of motion to really move the fist in Bucky’s ass, instead of the slight shifting that’s been shocking him in bright bursts. He pulls his fist closer to Bucky’s entrance, and Bucky clenches without thought, not wanting to let him out, and then Steve fucks back in, slow, and gratitude surges through Bucky, so big he’d think Steve just saved his life. As he gets fucked in short strokes, his hands ball into fists of their own, holding him up.

What if he walked on his fists like an orangutan? With Steve still fucking him both ends? He flattens his palms.

He says, “Steve,” and Steve says, “What?”

“My mouth, please. I need you to—to, fuck. Please fuck my mouth again.”

Steve punctuates the following questions by wiggling his fist around: “You gonna be a good little fucktoy and not laugh? Not make my job a hard time for me? Gonna be easy?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, I promise to think all your jokes are awful, please. Please fuck my jaw slack, okay? I need it.” 

“You do, huh?” He relents, fist bumping its way into Bucky’s mouth up to the knuckles. “You clearly do. Look at you.” Bucky looks at himself. His own shoulder, at least, head twisting, and Steve laughs and uses his fist to steer Bucky’s head back down. “Obedience noted.”

Bucky gives him a thumbs up.

Steve says, “You always need it. I know.”

They both relax into it. Find a rhythm. Shallow thrusts. A rocking horse kind of motion that Bucky meets with his tongue, flattening and lapping at the knuckles, the nails, slipping between Steve’s fingers so they can tighten around him, the skin smoother there. He’s a deer seeking nourishment from the salt lick of Steve’s hand. And he gets lost in the gaping elasticity of his own mouth. The flappy wet roll of his lips over Steve’s skin. The soreness in his jaw. He imagines he might get stuck open from this treatment.

He’s a mannequin made of moldable plastic, and Steve objects to living with a mouthless mannequin. Something that can’t talk. So to be sweet, he’s heated Bucky in his hands, made him pliable, and he has to punch the mouth shape in. Get it good and wide so it can spill a whole torrent of stupid words at once.

Or a whole torrent of stupid drool. Periodically and whenever the fisting and sucking’s got Bucky’s mouth squelching with pent-up spit, Steve thrusts his fist in deeper and lets Bucky convulse and cough around him, tears rolling down his cheeks, until he’s got him distressed enough, or whatever the criteria is, and pulls out.

And Bucky splutters and gasps and spits into the bowl. While he gets it all out and gets himself some semblance of together, Steve focuses on rotating the fist in his ass. Reawakening what’s settled into a background thrum of electricity, turning the volume up past what he was built to handle, distorting his thoughts. His dick jerks and spurts out liquid against his stomach, and he makes nonsense noises, rolling his shoulders and wracked with minor seismic events. Steve shifts inside him; everything inside him shifts, shuffles around, his stomach where his heart should be, his liver back-flipping over his kidneys, and—does he still have an appendix? He should know that. Why doesn’t he know— _ Oh.  _

Like a calm and dignified kind of person with nothing enormous rubbing inside him where he’s perfectly oversensitive, even though his heartbeat must be fast, his eyes must be dark, Steve spends each of these lulls saying shit to him like, “You know, it’s cozy in here? I wouldn’t mind taking you out like this in the winter. You’d be a nice little hand-warmer for me I think, better than those plastic-wrapped deals they sell at the deli.”

Or, the next time, “The only problem is, I use you too much, you might stop being a very good hand-warmer. Either I’m gonna have to line your hole with fleece, or find a way to keep you good and tight. You got any ideas how I can keep you tight even when I’m going out in the cold every day with my hands stuffed inside your ass?”

If Bucky doesn’t respond fast enough with, “Wanna break into a deli at night and pretend to buy me there?” or, “You can hurt me. I’ll tighten up if you hurt me there, I’ll. I’ll be good for you. Get—I don’t know, a stick? A ruler? Fuck, fuck,  _ Steve _ ,” or, to a later question, “No, I don’t know calculus at all. I’m really stupid and bad at it and I need you to—Oh my god,” Steve starts twisting his nipples, fast, back and forth, getting them swollen and red, stripped down to nerves, until Bucky gives it up. Makes at least vaguely coherent sentences with his mouth.

This time when Bucky finishes depositing his drool, Steve doesn’t pop his hand right back in. Instead, he drags his wet knuckles along Bucky’s cheek, mixing spit and tears. Thumbs at his lips. Bucky widens his mouth for him in anticipation, but Steve nudges it closed.

“Nope. We’re done.”

“Just one more round?” His voice is ragged. He yelps when Steve yanks his head back by the hair.

“No whining. You take what I give you until I decide I’m done.” His hand moves to wrap around the front of Bucky’s throat, a loose hold, with his thumb over the pounding carotid. Bucky keeps his head pulled back how Steve left it. Steve says, “You did it. You did it, Buck. You did your job. Right?” 

Bucky says, “I did my job.”

“Yeah. You did. Now shush. I need to get outta you.”

He releases Bucky’s throat, and Bucky mimes zipping his lips, the motion loose and sloppy. If he tried with the left hand, holding himself up with only the right, he’d definitely topple over into a drooling pile, ready for sleep.

Steve’s hand exits easy. Soda slurped up a straw. A vaudeville performer snagged off the stage with that long hook. The motion of it—and the cold surprise of emptiness that follows his hole clutching desperately at Steve’s retreating fingertips—makes him gasp. Sharp small gasps like pebbles in the dirt, and his brain’s not here anymore, he thinks. His brain got booed and snagged off the stage too.

He hears Steve peeling off the nitrile glove. Zipping it into a plastic bag in case Bucky wants to hang onto the evidence. And then, “Okay, okay, you’re okay,” he’s saying, petting down Bucky’s spine, and Bucky processes his own shaking body, how he’s whimpering in a happy way. Pleased, sleepy sounds.

“Okay,” he echoes, and exhales loudly. “Yeah.  _ Fuck _ .”

“Nope. No more fucking. It’s time to see what you produced for me.”

“Oh. Yeah. It’s.” The bowl doesn’t look nearly full enough. Gallons of drool should have poured out of him. He should be looking at the entire contents of Niagara Falls.

But Steve looks happy with what he sees: a shining shallow pool, harvested locally and organically through the ancient art of Bucky-fucking. “Crawl into the hall. I want you to see me doing this. Wanna make sure you know I’m doing it right.”

“I trust you.”

“Good. Then do as I say and crawl into the hall.” He kicks at Bucky’s ankle, and Bucky gets going, wincing and overcome with the screechy-pleasurable experience of having a body, especially the whole lower half of this particular body. He follows behind Steve, who’s holding the bowl and the fresh washcloth he grabbed from the linen closet before they started.

Outside his door, Bucky’s patted on the head and made to wait. At the front door, Steve turns, and checks that Bucky’s watching him dip the washcloth in the drool. Getting it damp. He abandons the bowl on the floor and steps outside. Bucky can’t see what’s happening, but he knows that Steve is wetting the knob. If anyone sees him, they’ll think it’s weird, sure, but not the whole other level, highest plane of weird this really is.

Steve re-enters. He gives Bucky a thumbs up, and Bucky thumbs-ups him right back. Then Steve takes the bowl and bends over to spill the excess drool on the carpet just in front of the door. Rubs it in with his hand, spreading it into a proper line. Protecting them both, thoroughly as he does anything. And he leaves the bowl on the floor, which is annoying; the kitchen is right fucking there, but Bucky lets it go.

It’ll be there in the morning. A reminder. That’s not bad.

Steve flaps a hand, shooing him down the hallway, and when Bucky just narrows his eyes, he sighs and says, “Go back in your room, idiot. Jesus, I gotta spell everything out?”

“Absolutely everything.” But he crawls back into his room.

Trailing him, Steve says, “All right. G. O. B. A. C. K. I. N. Y. O. Are you getting this?”

“Get back in yo? I’ll try, but I don’t know what it means.”

“U. R.”

“I’m what?”

And Steve’s hands are on his ribs, tickling and pushing him off his hands and knees, rolling him over, poking his nose, while Bucky giggles and bats at him.

Steve kisses him. Mouths at him roughly, sucking on his lower lip, fucking his tongue into Bucky’s mouth. And Bucky’s jaw is sore, used, so he lies there and takes it, moaning. When he does lift his tongue, Steve captures it in his teeth, and the moaning leaps into a high sob, and Steve lets up. Kisses along his sucked-on lower lip, and pulls away. Says, “Oh, you’re a lot of things. Where do I even start?”

“What am I most?”

Lips parted, Steve traces Bucky’s eyebrows with his fingertips. “I don’t know. Brave.”

“Ugh.” His chest is tight, his face warm. “Really? What’s wrong with you?”

“Okay then. Hmm. Definitely not smart, or funny. God knows you’re not attractive. Mine. You’re mine most.”

His next “Ugh,” is less emphatic, but still is what it is.

A soft laugh accompanies, “What? Fine. My property. How’s that?”

“Better. Best. Yeah. I love you too.”

“Who would’ve guessed?” He hums, and nudges Bucky, rolling him over onto his side. Holds him steady by the hip. And Bucky’s pliant, quiet, forgetting that he has bones or muscles or anything like that.

Two of Steve’s fingers dip into his hole, reminding him. Wrecked, stretched muscle. It spasms, pleasure-blown-up-and-pixelated sensation flooding him and wringing a long whine from his throat. He’s shushed, and replies with a sad moan. When Steve pulls his fingers out, he smears the lube coating them on Bucky’s thigh, where some has already dried.

“So much in here,” Steve murmurs. “You wanna clean yourself out before bed? Want me to clean you out?”

“No. Too much. Morning.”

“It’ll leak. Mess up your shorts.”

“So?”

“So.” Steve’s face appears in front of Bucky’s. His grin is lopsided. He crawls over Bucky to lie facing him. “I’ve got a different idea.”

“I’m stunned. You? An idea? That you’re looking evil about? All right. What are you cooking up to do to me?”

“You don’t gotta, I’m just pointing out. You could sleep naked—”

“And fuck up my sheets, excuse—”

“No. Shush. And I could put down newspaper. Instead of your sheets. Or on top.”

“I’m gonna  _ die _ , Steve.” He rolls over, staring at the ceiling, unable to look at Steve’s smug face, full-up with raw nerves like Steve’s still toying with his ass. “I’m gonna die from knowing you. I always knew that, but, Jesus. There were so many more dignified opportunities. Instead my death certificate’s gonna read, ‘Steven G. Rogers poured approximately three gallons of lubricant in his ass and then suggested putting down newspaper like he was a dog that hadn’t been housebroken.’ That’s it. That’s what the good people of Brooklyn get to read in the obituaries. You happy?” He cuts his eyes to Steve, still unable to face him full-on.

“Thrilled.” And he looks it. “You want it or not?” 

“You know I want it. But. Gimme a minute, thanks.”

He closes his eyes, trying to conjure the sensation. Thin, satiny newspaper against his bare skin. But harsher where the pages would end, layering over one another, corners and edges crumpling and threatening papercuts any time he shifted, and he would shift, fucked sore as he is, and turned all the way on without reprieve. The papery noise wouldn’t let him forget, let him pretend they were sheets, and he’d know all night that Steve had lined his bed with paper like lining a cage. If he sweats in his sleep—and he frequently does, when nightmares hit—he might wake up ink-stained. Marked with stock numbers or the funnies. Steve could spread him out on the kitchen table and read him aloud.

He grimaces. Opens his eyes. It’s too good. “I wouldn’t want to miss a second. I’d never let myself sleep.”

Steve nods and says, “Laundry day’ll just have to come sooner.” He puts his hand over Bucky’s erection, then circles his fingers tight around the base, and Bucky gulps. “I’ll wash them for you tomorrow.”

And  _ that’s  _ what’s gonna kill him, actually.

Once Bucky’s rehydrated—with a water bottle, chilled from the freezer, that Steve kindly pressed to his junk while he writhed and whimpered and went soft—he’s allowed to sleep. Steve sits on the floor, leaned against a table leg, reading the newspaper he didn’t replace the pink and black skull-print sheets with, while Bucky dangles his left hand over the table’s side and they hold hands. It’s fucked up and backwards, in the abstract, Steve down there. But he’s an imaginative guy. He can see how it really is: how he’s Rapunzel locked up in a tower, and Steve’s the thorny rosebush below, warning him off trying to jump from the window, keeping him safe from his own worst whims.

The next night’s the same, only Bucky’s already sore and sensitive, spent all day forcing himself not to limp. He didn’t  _ need _ to limp, exactly, but it would have been more natural, true to the empty ache in his ass that trailed down his thighs, deep in the muscle. Like pain leaked out of him the way the lube did overnight (and more in the shower, because he had closed up almost all the way by then, but not quite). Limping would have felt like honoring that, but he only limps when he gets home, for Steve’s benefit, so Steve smiles any time he sees Bucky walking, and when Bucky says he’s ready for bed, Steve puts him on the floor and fills up both his holes, until he’s crying and shaking and he’s sufficiently slobbered into the bowl, saliva trickling out around Steve’s fist to match the lube trickling persistently out of his ass. And when Steve’s done, more saliva pours freely from his slack jaw.

Again Steve wipes drool on the doorknob. Again he pours it in a line in front of the door. A ritual, a spell, and again he comes back and kisses Bucky stupid, and stays in there with him, this time in his arms, at least until Bucky’s fallen asleep. Lube leaks into the boxers Steve laundered while Bucky was at work. The words,  _ You’ll scream and no one else will care _ are embroidered into the waistband.

The night after that, Steve decides that Bucky hasn’t been good enough to get a fisting, because the way he was sitting on the couch to watch the dumb serialized  _ Wizard of Oz  _ adaptation he’s been trying to work his way through for Very Personal, Private Reasons looked, “Horrifying, unnatural, and unbefitting a polite young man of good status and training.” And okay, his leg had been behind his head and he’d been casually fellating his own fingers to the hilt while his other hand typed out a transcription, so Steve wasn’t exactly wrong, but Bucky hadn’t expected Steve to come home without warning and find him like that. So he still glares and whines his way through Steve forcing him, fully-clothed, to suck on lozenges until he produces enough drool to keep them safe through the night.

“Shut up,” Steve says, jerking hard on Bucky’s ponytail. He’s sitting behind Bucky, bracketing him with his legs, holding Bucky around the waist while Bucky holds the cereal bowl in his lap, his own legs folded. “Stop being an ungrateful little bitch when I’m trying to keep your throat healthy. You wanted me to be nice and make you choke, maybe you shouldn’t have been acting like a fucked up cock-hungry contortionist.” Bucky makes a sad noise to prompt Steve to jerk on his ponytail again. He gets what he wants, then lifts the bowl close to his mouth, and lets the excess saliva accumulating around the lozenge drip inside.

It takes a full hour and a half of sucking, complaining, Steve talking about the lecture he went to earlier and Bucky talking about the  _ Wizard of Oz  _ adaptation and both of them complaining about small dumb shit before Steve decides he’s made enough spit to be let off the hook. The medicinal sickly-sweet of lemon echinacea has fully colonized his taste buds. Possibly he’ll never scrub it all the way out.

But Steve kisses him long enough and hard enough after wetting the doorknob and floor that it must be all over  _ his _ tongue too, soaked in, so that’s okay. A secret between them. Matching mouths.

Before Bucky climbs into bed, when he’s still cuddled up with Steve on the floor post-necking, he says, “You like when I’m a fucked up cock-hungry contortionist.”

Steve bites his nose, and beams. “Yeah, and you like when I make up bullshit excuses to punish you.” He bobs his head to the side. “And  _ I _ like it. A lot. Your point?”

“Just that. Just liking it. I’m.” He makes his mouth small, bites his tongue. But Steve’s looking at him so openly, straight into him. “I’m happy.”

“Good, Buck.” He strokes Bucky’s hair. “That’s good.” It’s good.

  
  


-

  
  


A week of increased drool production’s passed when they’re eating dinner, chairs pulled close together on the same side of the table and Bucky says, “I haven’t heard anything from my secret admirer lately.”

“Oh?” Steve says with his mouth full of cheese-stuffed crust.

“Yeah, and not just break-ins. Mail’s dried up even.” He hasn’t received new embroidery, either. 

“What do you think it means?” 

“Hard to say.” Steve folds a pepperoni slice in half, crams the whole thing in his mouth, and says, “Awuehuhgh.”

Bucky says, “Why? Why did you do that?”

Steve shrugs, chewing with his mouth open while Bucky makes a dramatic repulsed face. Once he’s swallowed and used his own wrist as a napkin, Steve says, “Maybe he got the message. He’s not wanted here anymore.”

“’Anymore?’ When was he wanted?”

“You seemed pretty pleased. How can I be sure you weren’t ready to run off with him?”

“Fuck you. I’m over-brimming with romantic fidelity. And sexual fidelity for that matter. Only you.” 

“Well, if you say so.” He steals a fry from Bucky’s plate. “Why does this have ketchup on it?”

“Because I  _ put  _ ketchup on it. You have your own fries!”

“Do I? Anyway, Buck, my point is: He must’ve noticed the enhanced security, and taken a hint. Gotten out of our hair.”

“Hmm. We’re deloused?”

“Exactly. So I think we can scale back production now.” He chucks Bucky under the chin. “That all right with you?”

“No more regular fistings?”

“Not  _ that  _ regular, no. It was gonna be unsustainable. Your hole can only take so much before it gets stuck open and stops being a good time for me.”

“Guess nothing gold can stay. You have fun, then?”

“None at all. It was grueling work. _ Unbearable _ , playing with my favorite broken toy every night and watching him fall asleep happy.” Bucky’s stomach somersaults. “And what did I get paid?” He steals another fry, wiping the ketchup off on the plate as he does.

“With my dinner, apparently.” Steve nudges his own fries closer to Bucky. Purely out of spite, Bucky grabs a fistful and drops them all in front of himself. Douses them in ketchup. “Did you really make graphs?”

“Yep.”

“Can I see them?”

“I’ll give you printed copies. Laminated. You can do whatever weird shit you like to them then. Lick them. Jerk off on them. Take them in the bath. I don’t know what you’re into.”

Joy skitters up through Bucky and legs its way out of his mouth, so he’s humming one low note like a vacuum cleaner, shoving his chair back and pulling Steve’s chair back too and throwing himself into Steve’s lap, grunting, pressing insistent kisses to every bit of Steve’s face, and his hair and his neck, and his shoulders. His hands grip the back of Steve’s chair. He says, “I wanna put them in a binder. You gotta give them binder holes.”

“Oh, I gotta?” Steve is flushed, grinning.

“That’s the word from the top. I’m just the messenger.”

“Who’s this top who’s not me? Who’ve you been talking to?”

“No one. Never. You said it in your sleep, I swear. I told you, fidelity. But I swear to god, if you steal another fry while I am  _ in your fucking lap _ and confessing my limited-edition fucking love—”

But Steve sticks the stolen fry—crispy, ketchup-laden—in Bucky’s open mouth, and forcibly closes his mouth for him so he’ll chew.

-

A bat-signal comes before they have the chance to leave, before Bucky can smuggle Steve away to the middle of the wilderness so he won’t firm up his jaw and drag his uniform on and book it out of there in the middle of the night, covering a half-asleep Bucky with sloppy kisses and saying, “Won’tbetoolongpromisebegood.”

Sam  _ is  _ going to be Captain America, or, “American Falcon? Captain Falcon? Captain Americon? That’s with an ‘o,’ Steve, that’s what’s different, shut up, _ ”  _ Bucky heard him saying to Steve on speakerphone. 

Bucky, passing by, said, “Tell Sam I said hi,” and Steve said, “He can  _ hear  _ you,” and Sam said, “Oh, yeah, tell Barnes I said hi,” and Steve looked like he hoped the sweater he was folding would leap up and strangle him with its pom-pom-trimmed sleeves.

But in the meantime, Steve acts like he signed some kind of contract, like he and his other superhero friends aren’t the most questionably legal and confusingly organized operation this side of the underground fight club community a drunk guy in the park tried convincing Bucky to join last month **.** And his contract’s not up yet, apparently. AKA his verbal promise, or promise he made to God, or promise he wrote on himself somewhere in permanent ink or whatever it was isn’t up yet. Steve is always a man of his word unless lying is necessary to get shit done.

So Bucky spends a few days going to sleep alone.

When Steve comes home and drops his shield by the door like it’s a bowlful of saliva, Bucky’s sitting on the kitchen counter in the dark and eating out of a sleeve of Chips Ahoy.

Steve comes to him, and he pulls Steve close, wrapping his arm around Steve’s back and his legs around Steve’s thighs, still in uniform pants, though he’s changed into a sweatshirt up top that Bucky recognizes as Natasha’s; she wears it as a dress. Bucky gets kissed. Kisses back, and says, “All good, all bad, or all something else?”

“All good on the mission. Just all exhausted with me. I may have gotten a jellyfish sting.”

“Damn. You piss on it?”

“Clint was planning to do it for me. Sam and Nat both yelled at us. Urban legend?”

“Yeah, I coulda told you that. I’m the jellyfish expert in this household, I guess.”

“You are.” His next blink is long, like he drifts away under his eyelids, carried by an ocean, then his eyes snap open. The brain ocean’s full of jellyfish. Sting you to wake you back up. “And how  _ is  _ the household?” He rubs Bucky’s knee.

Bucky holds up a chocolate chip cookie. “Well, got these. Work’s been normal. And I jerked off while you were gone.”

Steve grabs Bucky’s jaw, not painfully. His eyes crinkle at the corners. “Yeah? How many times?”

“Just the once. I’m a lot less slutty without you around to rev me up.”

“Mmm. What’d you think about?” He takes the cookie and stuffs it in his mouth. Gross chewing sounds and dead-serious eye contact accompany Bucky’s answer.

“You. Um. A gun. You fucking me with a gun. And uh. You hadn’t taken the bullets out. You actually put bullets in while I was watching. And you made fun of me for being scared. You made, uh. A corny joke about ‘the little death.’ And you kept having to slap me because I was crying too loud, until you stuck my shirt in my mouth to shut me up.”

Steve swallows and moves his thumb to lie down the middle of Bucky’s lips. “That all?” Bucky nods. Steve kisses his forehead. Bucky kisses Steve’s thumb. “Thank you for telling me. We’re not doing that ever, you know.”

Bucky says, “Yeah, I know that, dumbass.” He reaches up to hold Steve’s wrist, tugging down so they can hold hands, and he says, “Let me cook for you. Cookies are no kinda meal. What do you want? Eggs, fried, as many as we got?”

“ _ No _ .” He sounds mad, but he’s smiling. “I don’t care. Whatever we’ve got.”

“Hmm.” Bucky looks at his abandoned Chips Ahoy sleeve. “I’ll order pizza. How’s that? Anchovies and garlic?”

Steve sighs, “God, yes. Thank you. And tell me more about jellyfish while we wait for it. That’s an order.” 

-

Awake too early again, jolted from a dream about having lost the physical ability to piss and now needing something to do with his hands, something organized, Bucky starts packing. Twenty-seven hours ahead of time, extremely responsible. Minimalist selection of weapons carefully rolled in a blanket and lining the bottom of his duffel, he opens a drawer to grab clothes he probably won’t be wearing most of the time, and pauses. Forgets to breathe. 

His secret admirer has stopped taking the hint. His secret admirer is at it again.

The mean sewn-in labels have spread, like a fungus. Not into every article of clothing he owns, but near about a third of them. _Your eyes/look like/tarantulas_ in cramped blue thread attached to the inner seam of a t-shirt. _U suck everything_ in the waistband of his jeans. _Smacked face/incoming >:( _hidden halfway up the sleeve of his sweater patterned in cat faces. _Toad-faced_ is attached to the outer ankle of one sock, and _loser_ follows it up in green thread on the ankle of its mate.

They’re all over the place. Bucky’s loserish toad face is flushed and his mouth isn’t big enough to smile the amount he needs to. He thinks he must be filling with helium. They’ll fly him in the Macy’s parade and he won’t notice anyone in the crowd below but Steve, pointing and laughing and eating popcorn. He opens his mouth to call Steve into the room, but changes his mind, remembering the time.

He doesn’t pack a scrap of unlabeled fabric. That’s a good enough way to tell Steve thank you.

-

Tonight, Steve trails him into his bedroom, stopping him on his way to the table with a hand on his left arm. Before turning, Bucky moves to the side, so he can lean against the Pac-Man machine. Steve’s in plaid pajama pants and a dressing gown Bucky didn’t know he owned, like he plans to sleep and wants everyone to notice and comment on those plans, and he’s holding a tall glass of milk. His hand remains on Bucky’s arm, at his bicep, thumb rubbing circles over the star.

“What’s with the costume?” Bucky says. “We in a mattress commercial? Because I’m not so sure this thing’ll sell.”

“We just need to target the right audience.”

“Yeah, ‘Hey, fellow traumatized lab experiments! Come and get your secondhand wooden tables so those scary computer-animated sheep fuckers—’”

“They fuck sheep?”

“ _ Fucking sheep— _ you know what I mean! You’ve  _ seen  _ commercials—can bounce over your chest as you wile away the night with nightmares of all—” Steve moves the hand from his bicep to cover Bucky’s mouth, though Bucky does defiantly finish, “kinds,” sounding like a foghorn. “Hey,” he complains when Steve removes his hand.

“What?” Steve smiles sweetly.

“What’s with the costume? What’s with the prop?” He clinks a metal finger on the glass. Condensation beads on the outside.

“This? Bringing my sweetheart a nice glass of milk to help usher in the sheep-fuckers.”

“You’re playing innocent.”

“Never in my life.” He grabs Bucky’s right hand and puts the chill glass to his palm, manipulating the fingers to curl in and hold it. “Here. Drink up now.”

Bucky brings it to his mouth, not ready to drink yet but not wanting to flagrantly disobey. It smells like milk. Fresh milk, even. Perishables are complicated for him in this body; he’s convinced he can detect the earliest stages of spoilage, pre-spoilage even, if that’s a thing, and struggles not to chuck food right down the garbage disposal in self-preservation.

Steve says he can detect it too. The difference is that Steve’s been comfortable with the thought of eating a loaf of bread that’s 90% mold since back when it might have killed him. And Bucky—Bucky’s a thousand times more irrationally sensitive than he’d like about the thought of things going inside his body that aren’t supposed to be there.

Unless he’s doing it for Steve. Then he’s sensitive about it in the best way possible.

He says, “What’s in it? Nothing with an odor. So what is it?” There can’t be no ulterior motive.

“Calcium. Ever since you started getting all those threats, well.” He wraps his hand around Bucky’s right wrist, tight but short of painful, and stares at their hands and the hovering milk. “I’ve been worried, thinking about how vulnerable you are.” His voice turns flat, his grip bruising, and he looks into Bucky’s eyes. “All these weak little bones someone could come along and snap.”

Bucky swallows and bites the inner skin of his mouth, right below his bottom lip. He knows from practicing faces in the mirror that this turns his mouth into the barest shadow of a frown. Better than that, it hurts like a jellyfish sting, if the sting were a jellyfish itself, swimming around in his suddenly pooling drool. If Steve broke his wrist, he’d splint him up after, immobilize him, yank his head back for the milk since he’d need help, such a pathetic little injured thing—

Steve snaps with his free hand. “Hey in there. You listening to me?” Bucky nods. He drops the skin from between his teeth, and licks at the sore spot he made. “I don’t want you getting hurt.”

“Liar.”

“What was that?”

“Sorry. I meant sometimes a liar. Liar conditional on the context we’re speakin‘ about.”

“Stop trying to sound smart. It’s sad. Now. Are you going to drink it like a good boy, or do I need to wedge your mouth open and pour that down your throat? I’m trying to help here.” He stops terrorizing the unfortunately sturdy bones of Bucky’s wrist and places his hand over Bucky’s hand so they’re holding the glass together. Teamwork. 

“You Steve the nutritionist now? How’s that spelled?”

“’Double ‘e’ before the capital ‘V.’ Not that you know the alphabet. I’m saying nonsense to you, now ain’t I?”

“Aww. You’re the nicest, you know that?”

“No. I’m not. Am I pouring this down your throat?”

It’s not unappealing, but the teamwork is relaxing. They should do more teamwork things together. It’s been ages. “Can you just help me a little?” He makes his voice squeaky; he sounds like Mickey Mouse. “I’m ever so weak and brittle and this glass is oh-so heavy!”

Steve laughs. “Shut up. All right. Open up, baby bird.”

“That’s gross.”

“I told you to shut up.” His Adam’s apple bobs. “Take your fucking vitamins, fucktoy.”

Overwhelmed, Bucky grins into his shoulder, scraping his face down the metal like he’s wiping off the excess emotion oozing from his pores. Then he straightens up and opens his mouth. His eyelids droop mostly shut as he and Steve lift the glass to his lips together.

Doesn’t taste like it’s got anything added to it. Maybe Steve spit in there, and just wanted to privately enjoy Bucky drinking his saliva. But maybe it’s doped with one of the dozens of odorless, tasteless drugs Steve must have access to in the Wacky Wonderful World of the Future, where there’s mad scientists galore.

Lifetimes and bodies ago, Steve kept a glass bottle of chloroform on their shared dresser, and would threaten Bucky with it from time to time (and the implicit threat always loomed through its presence). But to Bucky’s eternal disappointment, Steve was all talk in that department.

The milk is cool, and sweet, and Steve doesn’t rush him. Allows him to set the leisurely pace. Which makes Bucky even more suspicious that he’s gonna slump into slumber before the glass is even drained. Before he’s even in bed.

Steve’s eyes are trained on Bucky’s mouth. There’s no tension in his face like he needs to be prepared to catch Bucky’s unconscious body. There’s no tension in his face at all right now. Like maybe he’s really about to go to sleep too. “That’s good,” he says softly. “You’re being so good, Buck, taking care of your bones for me.”

Bucky squeezes his eyes closed. He tips the glass more, taking longer gulps. Steve’s thumb moves to cover his pulse. And Bucky can imagine that he really is fragile. A porcelain doll Steve keeps cushioned in bubble wrap. He’s rarely taken out to play.

Dropping to a whisper, or less than a whisper—if the NSA is listening, they’ll never know what Steve says—he continues, “Bones  _ and _ teeth, right? Need to keep that mouth nice for me too. One of the most valuable things I own.”

The milk almost goes down the wrong way when Bucky whines. He and Steve straighten the glass as he clears his throat. Then he licks his lips, and together they resume slipping the milk slowly into him. 

“Shhh. It’s all right. Keep drinking. You’re all right. I’ve been thinking about taking you on that Antiques Roadshow. Just your mouth, I mean. Keep the rest of you covered up so no one has to look at all that.”

Bucky opens his eyes and winks at Steve before closing them again, a thank you for the reprieve from all the—all the—but Jesus, Steve doesn’t let up for long.

“What do you think they’d price it at, huh? Don’t answer. I don’t know exact numbers, but I think it’d fetch a pretty penny.”

Bucky wants to laugh at the phrasing, but he breathes deep in and out through his nose, and nudges the glass to a steeper angle again. The dark behind his eyelids pulses. Steve’s hand is warm over his, the glass wet but no longer cold. Adjusting to their combined body heat. He isn’t drinking particularly quickly, but the endless repetition of his swallows makes them seem desperate anyway. Needy, greedy, and helpless.

“Bet they’ll say I shouldn’t be leaving a thing like that lying around. Let alone letting it move around in the world, unsupervised. Anything could happen.” A soft touch to his face, beside his mouth, and solid support beneath his chin. Steve’s thumb, he thinks, massaging his cheek. “Something precious as this deserves to be real well-taken—”

He opens his eyes. Steve tugs the glass down, and Bucky’s hand goes along with it. “Steve,” he says, and his voice is milk-and-feelings-wet. Steve’s thumb is still on his face, curled index finger still supporting his jaw. And he needs that support, he thinks; the milk is  puréeing his bones instead of steeling them.

“Shhh.” Steve’s face is stern. “Finish your milk, and then I’ll stop. All right? Then you can sleep. That’s all you need to do.”

All he has to do is take what he’s given. Steve expects nothing else. All Bucky has to be is a void, absorbing. He swallows spit and phlegm, and nods. “All right.”

“Good.”

He closes his eyes. There’s not much left. They raise the glass together and Bucky takes the milk in small sips. Focuses on breathing steadily.

Steve says, “There we go. You’re doing just what I want you to. Just what I told you. Don’t want you getting malnourished and people calling me an irresponsible owner, right?” Bucky doesn’t have to answer. He only has to drink, but he gives Steve a thumbs up anyway, and Steve’s thumb presses reciprocally against his shoulder. He’s down to the last drops, and Steve murmurs, “All right. Good. Now you’ll stay nice and strong so you can take it without breaking whenever I slam your big clumsy body into the wall. That right?”

Bucky opens his eyes. The empty glass lowers, Steve pulling it from his grip. Bucky clears his throat and says, “Yeah. Yeah, please, Steve. Good. Right.”

Steve smiles. “Milk mustache.” He wipes his thumb roughly across Bucky’s upper lip. “You did a real almost acceptable job for me there. Thanks.”

Bucky gives a small laugh and shrugs. “It’s time for. Bed,” he says, feeling one ladder rung below sluggish. The adjective form of the slime trail a slug oozes out of its ass. “It’s nighttime.”

“Wow, it sure is, pal.” Steve glances over his shoulder at the clock, and then back, grinning. “How’d you figure that out?”

“Got all ‘A’s in clock school.” He takes Steve’s hand in his and tugs. “Nighttime. Bed. We sleep up for vacationing.”

“You this eloquent at work, too?” Steve lets himself be led, but stops at the bed. Bucky’s already clambered up, and he’s pulling the sheet and a quilt over himself at the same time as trying to pull Steve on top of him. Three bedclothes for the price of—whatever it is that people normally pay for by standing still and getting sweet-talked and sedated. 

Tugging harder at Steve, who still won’t budge, he says, “You drugged the milk?” His body’s heavy, and carved from soap; his eyes are sinking back into his head; his tongue feels clumsy as a puppy learning to walk.

“What are you talking about?” Steve kisses him on the forehead. “Why would I do a thing like that?”

“’Cause you love me, dumbass.”

“Sure. That’s a reason.” He kisses the back of the hand Bucky’s holding him with, and Bucky kisses Steve’s hand in turn.

“Come on. Steve. It’s sleeping time.”

“It is for you. But right now I’m gonna move your bag to the front door so it’s ready to go. That all right?”

“Very efficient of you. Yeah, all right. Tactical. Take it away, Jeeves.”

Steve snorts. He squeezes Bucky’s hand hard, then grabs the duffel up from the middle of the floor and hefts it over his shoulder. “Everything’s in here, right?”

“Oh, yeah. Everything in the world. No, two of everything. Noah’s ark right there.”

“Answer the question, smart aleck.”

“Yeah, yeah. It’s good to go. It’s good, honey. Come back in here when you’re done, though. When you’re done your stuff you do out there.”

“Oh, I will. Don’t worry about that.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve has Bucky drink a glass of milk that Bucky thinks might be doped with a sedative; Steve claims that it isn't, but Bucky remains uncertain. Bucky is into the idea of the milk being drugged and drinks it willingly, but this chapter does not come to a conclusion about whether the milk is drugged or not and Bucky is also generally overwhelmed while drinking the milk as Steve is also pushing him to listen to himself being praised excessively while he drinks. No one's boundaries/limits are being crossed here, but it is an emotionally intense moment for both of them.


	3. house of fun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Two more specific warnings related to the "mild mindfuck" tag in the end notes. Again, possibly adjacent to consent issues. The second warning could maybe be considered a spoiler in that a scene hinges pretty heavily on it. 
> 
> 2\. This chapter contains a brief discussion of heavy electrical play.

A fist yanks at his hair. He screams, but the noise is swallowed when he opens his eyes; a glowing black-masked face floats above him, laughing low and menacing. Those are Steve’s eyes, framed in blue-white light that forces Bucky to squint. Steve’s lips form the words, “You’re coming with me,” but his voice is gravelly and Grand-Canyon-deep, artificially modulated by—something inside the mask?

Bucky considers the situation, and then lashes out with a fist, and the hand that snatches him around the wrist is undeniably Steve’s too. Callouses in the right places. Thumb pressing on his pulse the way no one else would know to, calming him. Bucky furrows his brow, overly aware of each blink. His own breathing is heavy too, but silent, and he studies the mask, willing his sleep-mushy brain to understand what he’s looking at. He knows the shape. His eyes flick upward, and there are ears on top of the head.

Steve is Bat-Man. 

Then Steve says, “What did I tell you?” and grabs his other wrist too, pulling at him, and Bucky struggles weakly.

Failing to wipe the smile off his face, he says, “No. No, you can’t. Don’t take me.”

“Shut up,” Bat-Man’s voice says, and Bucky giggles.

“ _No_ , please! Where are we going?”

Steve hauls him off the table by the wrists, and he’s so limp he slumps to the floor, wincing at how his knees bang on the wood.

Steve hisses, a sound that was probably a _tsk_ before the voice modulator got to it, and says, “That’s what happens when you resist. You’re coming with me.” Hovering up there, his uncovered mouth and chin disappear, so he’s nothing but eyes glowing blue in the dark.

“No, I can’t! I have plans! I’m going on vacation today! I think it’s today.” He cranes his neck around Steve’s legs to see the clock, and yes, it’s almost five in the morning. He’s going on vacation, “Today! Yeah! Please, let me go.” He’s going on vacation right now.

The fist returns to his hair, pulling hard, his scalp a used-up pincushion, and his mouth falls open; he rocks his hips forward. Steve steps on his thigh with a boot, exerting pressure. And Bucky notices the enormous swathe of fabric slung over his shoulder, dark, with an intricate pattern that he can’t make out. It opens up into a tube, and Steve releases Bucky’s hair only to shove him onto his back and gently straighten his legs out before stuffing them in the tube’s mouth. He pulls it up over Bucky’s stomach, and it’s roomy, wide enough to slide past his shoulders to cover his face. Consumed whole, he struggles more; he must look like a snake, a worm. The mouth closes at the top of his head. Tightened with a drawstring.

“There we go,” Bat-Man’s voice says.

Bucky’s own breath warms his face in the small space. With the lights in his room off, he can’t tell how opaque the fabric is. “What are you doing?” he calls into the dark.

“Taking you. Just like I promised.”

Then he’s lifted off the ground, like a sack of potatoes instead of a sack of Bucky, and slung over Steve’s shoulder. He tries to grind his hips against Steve’s chest, and Steve smacks his thigh, and then his upturned ass, hard enough to sting through the thick fabric.

Bat-Man’s voice says, “Stop it. Be good,” and Bucky laughs, but hides it in a fake cough and yells, “No! No, please, Bat-Man!” which just gets him laughing again.

“Bat-Man doesn’t negotiate with stupid spoiled animals.” Steve lugs him down the hall to the front door, careless, letting Bucky’s head knock against the wall, though not very hard. Enough to jolt him out of the fuzzy haze he’s falling into, blood rushing to his brain even as his dick tries, tooth-and-nail, to claim all the blood for itself.

Loudly he says, “Ouch! Bat-Man is cruel?”

“Only for special cases.” With a grunt, he lowers Bucky to the floor, face-down. Unbound inside the bag, Bucky pushes himself up on his elbows, his knees. Makes a vague attempt to stand only to be batted back down to the floor by Steve’s hand slamming into his shoulder. “Nice try.” So Bucky tries to squirm in what he thinks is the direction of his room, and all Steve has to do is put a boot on his head, pressing him to the ground, and Bucky gives in. Accepts his fate.

Bat-Man’s voice says, “Much worse try,” and Bucky could fall back asleep like this, pinned, encased.

He says, “Sorry,” but doesn’t sound sorry at all. He bobs his head forward to grab some of the fabric between his teeth, drawing it further into his mouth, sucking. Thick cotton stretches tight over his bottom lip and chin, squashing his nose. This is his. Steve made this for him.

The boot disappears. The first touch to his arm is startling; he’s starting to forget he’s got individualized parts like arms instead of one huge tube body. He’s manhandled until the wall’s at his back and his legs are out in front of him. Steve’s hands frame his face through the fabric, steely.

Bat-Man’s voice says, “Now, I need you to be a very good little fuckup. Sit with your knees pulled up to your chest.” Bucky obeys immediately, but he gets hissed at. Steve’s hands grip his ankles and yank his legs straight. “Uh-uh. _Inside_ the bag. Curl up in a ball at the bottom of the bag _. Now.”_

Like curling in a ball at the bottom of the pool at the YMCA. By himself, the surface light-years above his head, or with Steve, in the deepest part of the shallow end. It was never a competition to see who could stay under longest. There’d be no point to that. But Steve liked to follow Bucky under, then rise up and wait for his return. Watching him curled up, blue and distorted, timing him by the big clock on the wall. Both of them challenging Bucky to do it longer each time.

Puberty hit, and Bucky began wondering if Steve would ever put a helping hand on top of his submerged head. Challenge him to do it longer by holding him under. A challenge he wouldn’t be permitted to back down from.

He squirms awkwardly into the bottom of the bag, curled up on his back with his knees to his chest. It’s dark as having his eyes shut against stinging chlorine. As distant from any difficult reality. Then Steve’s voice, distorted by future technology instead of by the water between them, says, “Good,” and the bag lifts into the air with no Bat-Man-gravelly grunting or any other indication that Bucky weighs more than a load or two of laundry.

His stomach swoops in response to being abruptly upright, and to having no hard surface beneath him. The tight bundle of his body’s floating about hip-height on Steve, he thinks, from the feeling of their backs pressed together. Most of the empty fabric at the sack’s top has been twisted so Bucky can’t swim his way up toward the light beyond its mouth. The fabric must be clasped in Steve’s fist, the sack swung over his shoulder.

“Good?” Bat-Man’s voice repeats, and Bucky says—too loud, he thinks—“Good, good. It’s good. I’ll be good for you, Bat-Man. Bruce Wayne, sir.”

A fucked up, creaky laugh. “Oh, you think you know my secret identity, do you?”

“Hey, I’d never tell anyone.” He worms a hand behind him to stroke down where he thinks Steve’s spine is with one finger. “Promise.”

“It doesn’t matter. I’ll make _sure_ you can never tell anyone anything again.” And that’s like the ground disappearing from beneath him a second time. He closes his eyes, opens his mouth, takes a shuddering breath.

They’re moving. The door’s opening. Steve’s keys jangle and the locks click. Bucky stays quiet and still on the walk down the hall, down the stairs, his body swinging and nudging against Steve with every step. He pretends to really only be a load or two of laundry, and trusts that he looks the part. Steve wouldn’t do this without being absolutely sure he looks the part, but the thought of someone noticing what he is—the thought of someone knowing that he’s Steve’s property to stuff in a bag and take on the road at his leisure—makes it so he’s got to bite his lip to avoid whimpering. Painful enough that he won’t squirm or flex or anything else incriminating either.

He’s very normal, non-human luggage, and Steve’s probably not even got the Bat-Man mask on anymore. If anyone wanders past them despite the early hour, they’ll have no idea about Steve’s secret identity. And Bucky would never tell them. Ever. He promises.

They’re outside, the air noticeably more humid even tucked away as he is, voices somewhere in the distance, and then they’re not outside, not exactly.

He asked Natasha last week, while both their mouths were stuffed with burgers, how best to go about renting a car, and the next day she texted him, _Keys are in your desk drawer @ work,_ with an alien emoji. The keys were in his desk drawer. A banged-up grey car was improbably parked in the most convenient spot outside their building when he got home.

He texted her, _I owe you_ , and she responded, _yes :)._

He’s sat inside the car since then, familiarized himself with it, found some cinnamon gum in the glove compartment. But he hasn’t, before now, been stuffed into the backseat in a wrapped-up lump lying on his side. That’s new and fun.

He hears Steve pop the trunk, slam it shut, then climb into the driver’s seat and start the engine.

They’re off, pulling out of the spot fast enough that Bucky rolls forward with a small scream and gets kind of. Wedged between the backseat and the front seats. He wriggles, straightening out enough to sit on the floor properly, legs stretched in front of him and back against the door, drawstring still holding the sack’s mouth closed.

Laughing, Steve says, “You can come out now. Gimme a sec,” and the car stops, less startlingly than it started. The closed mouth loosens. Steve pushes it down so Bucky’s head pops out, and starts driving a second later, leaving Bucky to shimmy his own shoulders free too, to push the whole thing down to waist level.

It’s still dark out, but the streetlights are enough to shock him, to make him blink fast. “ _Steve?_ ” he gasps. “ _You’re_ Bat-Man?”

“Only on special occasions. Thank god you’re such a dumbass, huh?”

“That mask was top-notch. Had me fooled for sure.”

They hit a red light, and Steve takes the opportunity to twist all the way around, grab Bucky’s shirtfront, and pull him in for a kiss.

“Happy Bubble Tea Anniversary, Buck. Your meds are in the glove compartment.” He nods at the metal travel bottle shoved in the center console’s cup holder. “Water.”

It’s an order, and Bucky rolls his eyes and says, “Spoil me, why don’t you,” but obediently washes his pills down instead of dry-swallowing.

“You have an idea how I could make you less spoiled, I’m all ears. God knows I’ve been trying since ’34 to humble you.”

“Nah. Not a single idea in my head.” He offers the water to Steve, who shakes his head and holds up a bottle of blue Gatorade. Bucky sticks his tongue out at it. “Your funeral. But as many pegs as you’ve knocked me down, seems like I’m doomed to live an endlessly spoiled life.”

“Tragic.” Their red light ends as Bucky’s clambering up into the backseat to sit like a person.

“Don’t I know. I’m _burdened_ with all these riches. Giving me an entitlement complex ten miles long.”

Speaking of which—He runs his hands along his still-trapped thighs. His very own personal handmade sack. It smells and feels like Steve washed it with softener. Brown cotton littered with small, bright flowers in pink and blue and yellow. They’re all bunched together, colors mixed up, the overall effect verging on dizzying. It’s almost the same pattern as the curtains they made for their first apartment, and packed up and brought from place to place. Bucky bought that fabric on clearance, getting in under the wire before rationing hit, wanting something nicer than the yellowed-with-age flimsy curtains that came with the room.

Once, he was drunk—they both were, probably—dry-mouthed and happy and half-asleep, lying on the floor and rubbing the fabric between his fingers, and telling Steve, “See, look, look, they’re symbolic. The brown’s. My hair. The yellow is your hair. Blue? Your eyes—”

Steve interrupted him, “Yeah? What color are _your_ eyes then?”

“None. I don’t got any. Anyway. The blue’s your eyes. And the pink’s me after you slap the shit out of me.”

Steve pushed up close to him. Laid a hand over his heart. He said, “You want me to stop at pink?” and Bucky kissed him then, and he thinks he shook his head while they kissed. If he didn’t, he should have. He wanted red; he wanted black and blue. 

He drags a nail over a pink flower positioned above his knee. “This my sack?”

“Your sack’s between your legs, Buck. It’s that weird dangling thing with those protuberances full of—”

“ _Jesus,_ I hate you. I hate you. Really. Tirelessly.”

“Yeah?”

“With my entire heart. It belongs to you, sure, but you know. Full of hatred.” He sighs, purposefully contented-sounding. “This is it? The one you wanted to make?”

“No, it’s a different sack. One I didn’t want to make. The one I wanted to make is back home.”

“Can you let up and let me live a second?”

Steve smiles at him in the mirror. “And who would benefit from that?”

“Oh, no one.” He kicks his legs in their confines. “You did a great job, you know. This is beautiful.”

“Well it had to be to—”

“If you say _anything_ implying I’m beautiful too, Rogers, I am pulling this car over. I am _leaping—_ ” Steve’s in hysterics, but Bucky continues—“into that seat and yanking the fucking wheel. I don’t care if we crash in a fiery burst, you got that?”

Steve says, “Jesus christ someone’s presumptuous today. Fucking hell.” He snorts loud as a car horn, and gets himself under control. Mostly. His voice is still happily strained when he clarifies, “I was going to say, you fucking swollen-headed piece of shit, that it had to be beautiful to make up for the monstrosity I was gonna be sticking in there. The revolting, squirming, slimy grub of a—and I say this only in lieu of a more fitting word—humanoid I somehow got stuck with. The utter fucking waste of space and time and sound in a greasy fucking Halloween wig—”

“Jesus, all right!” The milk must have done its job, because his teeth feel like they’re lengthening, like he’s grinning hard enough he’ll mutate and have a horse’s mouth on a human face. His heart’s equine too, leaping back and forth over hurdles. He wants Steve to hand-feed him sugarcubes. “Point made, man.”

Which would be better: Steve carrying around a little notepad to jot down new names to call him, or insulting Bucky coming so naturally that they’re all born right on his tongue, slipped into the air without a second thought? Bucky debates the merits of each possibility constantly, and that’s why he’s never asked.

“Bad Bucky, interrupting.” Steve’s syllables gallop too, irrepressible. They’re both really getting in the rural spirit. “As I was saying, if you’re gonna make a sack for kidnapping what basically amounts to a trash can full of dryer lint that somebody pissed in, well, that sack’s got a lot of heavy lifting to do in the aesthetics department. Doesn’t it?”

“Yeah, yes. You don’t stop, I’m gonna come in my pants, all right? I love you too. I love you so fucking much,” and Steve hums and says, “Yeah, back at you.”

The first part’s not true—he’s fully flaccid—but his heart might come in its pants. Also known as his chest cavity. Those pants. It might bleed out? In his defense, he’s still getting his marbles together after the extremely disorienting and traumatic experience of being kidnapped by Bat-Man in the middle of the night. In the prosecution’s favor, however—

“The milk wasn’t drugged?”

“No, but you thought it was.”

“I thought it _might_ be. It should have been. You really slacked.”

Steve takes one hand off the wheel and crooks his finger so Bucky leans toward him. Close enough that Steve can smack him upside the head with hardly any effort. “Don’t be rude.”

“Don’t not have your eyes on the road.”

Eyes on the road this time, Steve smacks him again. “Don’t lecture me.”

“Don’t stop being an asshole.”

“That I can manage.”

Bucky smiles, but grumbles, “I don’t lecture you unless I gotta.”

“I know that. And it’s appreciated. But I reserve the right to hit you for it anyway.”

“Reservation accepted. Reservation _very_ appreciated.” Still leaned forward, he kisses behind Steve’s ear. “Mind if I join you up there?”

“I mind a great deal. But I guess that’s my lot in life. Come on.”

“Yeah, I just gotta—” He worms his way fully out of the sack. Folds it up neatly and leaves it on the seat, and clambers into the passenger seat at the next red light.

Steve smacks his hands away when he goes to put his seatbelt on. “Let me handle that.” He fusses over its placement, needing it to lie across Bucky’s body the exact safest way before he’ll deign to acknowledge the green light.

Bucky says, “Control freak,” and Steve says, “What of it?” He’s driving with a lot of care; the streets are mostly clear of other cars, but Steve knows that Bucky hates driving anywhere pedestrians might crop up, and there are loads of stray cats in their neighborhood besides.

Something eases from both their bodies once they’re on the bridge. Steve’s foot is heavier on the gas and his hands relax on the wheel. Bucky, scrolling through the email he got from the cabin’s owner last night, slides down in his seat. Spine in an indecent slump, feet braced on the dashboard in the boots Steve left under the passenger seat for him. Sun’s sneaking into the sky, hot glow edged in the same blue as the Gatorade Steve’s been trying to goad him into drinking.

He closes his email to take a picture.

Steve says, “Yeah, it’s pretty. Boots off the dashboard.”

Bucky obeys, snapping a few more pictures. “This car’s already dirty. And my _spine_ hurts if I don’t sit that way.”

Steve purses his lips and side-eyes Bucky. “It does _not_. Does it?”

“No, it doesn’t. Sorry. But this car _is_ disgusting. And we’re on vacation. We’re relaxing.”

“Fine.” Steve takes a hand off the wheel to pull on Bucky’s ankle, and Bucky puts his boots back up where they were.

Bucky kisses him on the shoulder, and gets a little smile in return. He says, “Lady we’re renting from asks that we recycle and compost. You gonna compost me?”

“Am I gonna stick you on a pile of rotting food and leave you there? That what you’re asking?”

“Y’know, anything can sound unappealing if you take it literally, Rogers.”

“That’s Barnes-Rogers to you.”

“Not yet, it’s not. I haven’t gotten my church fulla toxins.”

“Common law and you know it. Shaddup. Okay, I’m literally gonna put you in a tree and beat you like a piñata. Does that sound unappealing?”

“Hmm.” Bucky lolls his head to the side so he’s peering up at Steve through his lashes. “Baseball bat or stick?”

“A stick for sure. We’re gonna be in the great outdoors, Buck. I’m not taking the natural resources for granted.”

“Yeah, a baseball bat—That’s a real city boy tool for beating me, isn’t it.”

Sunrise heads straight for their eyes, and Steve pulls the visor down. “The real city boy tool would be ripping up a subway rail and beating you with _that_.”

“Third rail’s electrocuted.”

“Then I wouldn’t use that one, would I?”

“No, I s’pose you wouldn’t.”

  


-

All Bucky’d asked for, when they’d only been in their apartment a couple months, still adjusting to the shape of being people, of being alive for the foreseeable future, was some light tasering. Nothing extreme. Not being put out in a lightning storm naked and flying a key on a kite or anything, even if the thought had appeal. First he would put on period garb, and then Steve would strip it off him, complaining that there was no reason to scorch good clothes. But, no. He asked for some light tasering. Nothing more.

He knows for sure that it must have been soon after they moved in, because spending time with Steve felt like the scheduled kind of spending time with Steve. Like a treat he was giving himself, and one he dreaded finishing. A gumball he’d spent a whole precious penny on. A nickel, even. A gumball from somewhere ritzy. Steve’s attention, sweet and hard between his teeth.

And he also knows it was that long ago because he didn’t yet get that sometimes, well—sometimes his brain was kind of jumbled up about things. What was a good fantasy versus a good reality.

And Steve hadn’t gotten that either, had looked totally thrown out of whack when Bucky asked, and been stilted and anxious about turning him down.

He knows now he definitely never _asked_ for anything that harsh before. But he’s still less sure about—

Head in Steve’s lap, Steve’s hand stroking his hair, steadier now that they’d established no one was getting tasered around here, lightly or not, Bucky said, “I can’t remember. If I liked that thought—I mean, I guess I didn’t ask, but—If I wanted it when I was smaller too.”

The first time he’d said something like that, Steve had interrupted, correcting, “You mean when I was smaller,” and Bucky had been knocked off course.

“Oh,” he’d said. “I guess we both were,” and the skin around Steve’s eyes had creased like it was a joke.

Steve said it again now. “When _I_ was smaller.”

“No. Not that. This is about me, Steven.”

“You were barely smaller, unless you mean when you were a kid. You wanted me to electrocute you when we were kids?”

“ _No_. Well. Not that I can remember. Maybe. But practically a kid. We were practically kids the whole time before the war, you know.”

“ _You_ weren’t.”

“If I wasn’t, then you weren’t either. If you were, then I definitely was, so please don’t interrupt.”

“How’s that a ‘so?’ What’s the causality there?”

“I said ‘please.’”

“You did. Nice of you to mind your manners for once.”

Bucky huffed. “Maybe it doesn’t make sense, but I don’t think of it like that. I was smaller. Weaker. Younger. Stupider.” He shrugged. “You were that stuff too, but—I don’t know. You’re pretty constant in my head. A lot more constant than I am. Details like that are negligible when it comes to you.”

“What, size doesn’t matter?”

Bucky sat up, shifting over on the couch, and stared pointedly at Steve’s crotch. “Uh, if we’re talking lewdly, then no, it kind of doesn’t in our case. Unless you’ve been doing nude sunbathing on the roof and that thing’s some kinda solar panel giving you the steam to beat me up—”

“The solar panel giving me steam?”

“Shhh let me mix my metaphors; I’m old and stupid. And the larger it is, the more power, I’m saying.”

“Pretend for a second we aren’t talking about my dick, since we _aren’t_.”

“Pinning your dumb dick joke on me. Typical. Fine—It. I mean, it matters. It matters _a lot_ that you’re happier now. As happy as a cartoon raincloud gets.” Steve pinched his cheek, and Bucky’s face jumped, a quick blink and his mouth opening wide before settling into a smile. A little wetness in his left eye. He met Steve’s gaze. “It matters that your body’s not making hell for you anymore. I like that. But no, it doesn’t matter as in changing what kind of person you are to me.”

“All right.”

“You know that, I thought. I thought I said it.”

“You did. A long time ago. Didn’t know if things changed and now you missed—That.” Despite the flush crawling up his face, Steve kept eye contact, probably because acknowledging that the vocalized dip in self-esteem had made him feel skinned raw would only make him feel even _more_ skinned raw, and then he’d have to choose between hiding _that_ or not and it could turn into a whole messy feedback loop.

Bucky knew how that went. He kissed the tip of Steve’s nose and teased, “He was all right. You’re all right. I wake up and a different blond asshole’s eating at my kitchen table tomorrow, I’m sure he’ll be all right too.”

“Excuse me?”

“What, you thought you weren’t replaceable? Ah!” Steve’d started tickling him, furious, between his ribs, and Bucky kicked out, but then his legs were trapped between both of Steve’s. It was too much, both the explosion of cartoon speech bubbles full of spiky transliterated laughing noises rocketing painfully up from his stomach and out his mouth, and the joyful intensity in Steve’s furrowed brow, opened mouth, and tongue poked in his cheek. All skinned-raw nerves forgotten.

Bucky said between and around the giggles the speech bubbles became when they slipped past his lips, “I can call the next one Steve too, if it makes you feel more special or—Ah! Fuck, mercy, please. Mercy. I mean it.” 

Steve stopped, and gave Bucky’s ribs a little pat. Which felt fine, but Bucky squirmed to be dramatic. He said, “I’m at your fucking mercy here.”

“Are you usually not? Was that Steve ‘T-O-O,’ or Steve the number two?”

“Steve the Second you mean? Seems a little grand for that guy. I meant with two _O_ s.”

“It _would_ be too grand for him. Your plan’s okay though.”

So no, Steve’s never gonna beat him with the third rail, but now a baseball bat’s on the table for when they’re home again. A real slugger of a bat. Not even one of those foam-wrapped things. At least, Steve hasn’t changed the terms to that yet, so Bucky can dream.

  


-

“Can I put my head in your lap while you drive?” His lips don’t move much when he asks, and no one but Steve would ever hear him at this volume

Eyes on the road, bless him, Steve ruffles Bucky’s hair and says, “I encourage it. But I wanna stop at a supermarket. You’re driving when we’re done in there. If you’re up to that.”

“Seems fair.” He reciprocates the hair-ruffling, and Steve swats his hand away good-naturedly.

“Come on. Head in my lap. Now.” He gestures Bucky down and Bucky goes, shifting and twisting, removing his seat belt like he’s the daredevil bad seed here, until his spine has no objections to his position.

The denim beneath his cheek is soft with wear and washing. Warmth seeps through from Steve’s body. No jutting bone, and not a ton of fat either, but Steve’s thighs are solid planes of muscle not so different from Bucky’s bed at home.

Steve puts on the radio, and hums along in the wrong key. Intermittently, his fingers play with Bucky’s hair, scratch at his scalp. Lull him into a haze that only grows more peaceful with each bit of muttered road rage trash talk out of Steve’s mouth.

Steve says, “What, is this asshole driving with his fucking _tongue_ ?” and Bucky says, “Don’t act like you don’t wanna drive with your fucking tongue,” and Steve says, “I want to drive an eighteen-wheeler over _your_ tongue. How’s that?” and Bucky hums and says, “Good. That’s good.”

  


-

The cooler in the trunk’s been thoroughly stocked with groceries from a Super Stop & Shop just off an exit, they’ve stuffed about ten energy bars each in their mouths, and Bucky’s bright-eyed and refreshed as a selkie donning her slippery seal skin for the first time in years and discovering it still fits perfectly.

Before sliding into the driver’s seat, he says to Steve over the top of the car, “Hey, don’t fuck with me while we’re driving? It’s been a while. I need to—I’d just like you to hold off on poking or hitting me or what have you. For now.”

Steve, both looking and sounding insulted, says, “I can be nice,” and Bucky, popping the door open, says, “I didn’t _say_ be nice.”

“Oh, well all right. I can work with that.”

  


-

  


By the time Steve’s yawning every other sentence, words opening up and rumbling like volcanos, Bucky’s had a master class in how to demean someone exclusively through knock-knock jokes, riddles, and games of twenty questions, and his throat hurts from laughing.

“Steve, hey,” he says through his own copycat yawn. “You should sleep. I’m good here.”

“I should keep you company.”

“Seriously, I’m fine. Get a nap in. Focus on having the energy to wreck me when we get there, all right?”

“Hmm.” Steve stretches, hands in fists that he’s careful to keep far away from Bucky’s head. “Ask nicely.”

Bucky growls. “You’re a nightmare. Fine. Please, Steve. Get some shut-eye. Pretty fucking please, okay? You need it.”

“Yeah. Yeah okay. Just ’cause you asked.”

He jerks awake as they’re closing in on the cabin, the nice GPS lady’s crisp voice directing them to leave all real roads behind.

Bucky says, “Hey, sleepyhead,” and Steve mumbles something indistinct and chugs more Gatorade.

The driveway’s a stretch of dirt cutting through the grass, looping around the cabin’s back. He drives slowly, both to take in the cabin and because he’s suddenly gripped with anxiety that he might manage to make roadkill of something small and innocent if he goes more than a mile an hour.

The Airbnb photographs had all looked professional, and he sees that someone clearly Photoshop-touched-up the chipping sky blue paint on the porch steps, and the grass maybe was recently mown when they were taken, as though he came here for mown grass.

Fuck a capitalistic waste-of-space-and-water lawn; they’re looking for wilderness.

Besides that, it’s as he pictured. One sprawling story of dark green wood, a red brick chimney climbing the side. A peaked roof. A little way’s distance from some woods, and from a lake, individual trees scattered afar in the field. And no one but them close enough to hear him scream.

Steve doesn’t comment on the snail’s pace, or on the cabin’s exterior. And he doesn’t say much as Bucky finally parks and they pop the trunk, Steve grabbing both their bags and Bucky cradling the cooler in his arms like it’s a big plastic puppy. But the way Steve squints into the sun, and the absence of tension around his mouth—Basically, they’re renting one enormous fucking fire escape, and Bucky will swallow any risk if it means Steve spending days on end looking this way.

Inside, Steve stops, and whistles, long and low. “Jesus.” He turns to look at Bucky. “How much did you spend on this?”

“Gee, I dunno. How much you spend on our sex gym?”

“I’ve got deep pockets. Fuck off.” He glares, and Bucky grins at him, keeps grinning after Steve’s turned back around and stepping further into the living room.

“Yeah, well I’ve got deep pockets full of Nazi blood, honey. And funny thing, they bleed moolah along with all that plasma and iron bullshit if you just get the right info before blowing shit up.”

Steve’s audibly rolling his eyes, pretending to be tired of hearing about this when really, he’s hardly ever heard about it at all. “Yeah, I know. We’re all very proud of you. You win righteously looting vengeance artist of the century.”

“Of _both_ centuries.”

“Fine. I’ll put that on your trophy. _How much_ did you pay?”

Steve deposits both duffels on one of the three fat leather couches. He approaches the fireplace and strokes the mantle where it’s not lined with tchotchkes. Swivels his head slowly to take the rest in.

As he walks wonderingly along the perimeter of the room, Bucky counts off answers on his fingers: “No idea. Can’t remember. You bought a whole building. All my expenses last month were paying off other people’s medical bills so I think I cosmically earned us some gross indulgence. Don’t worry about it. It’s a _gift_ , you can check online yourself, and let’s just pretend we live here for fuck’s sake. Look at it.” 

The real answer is, _Not nearly as much as Steve’s definitely thinking_ , but it’s fun to jerk him around.

“I’m looking.” And Steve stops taking it all in to stride over to Bucky and kiss him on the mouth. “I love it.” On the jaw. “But don’t tell me you don’t want me to give you a hard time.” In the hollow of his throat. “You bourgeois piece of shit.”

“Of course I want you to give me a hard time.” He rubs his hand up and down Steve’s back. “I got this place so you could give me an extra special hard time. And if my chauffeured transport here’s any indication, I think you’re gonna nail it.”

“I’m gonna nail something for sure.” He grabs Bucky’s ass two-handed and yanks him so they’re pressed tight. Walks them backward until they hit the back of the couch, and then keeps going. Draping over it, upside-down, shoulders sinking into the cushions and spine doing something Bucky’s couldn’t if he paid it. One of his hands stays on Bucky’s ass, and the other pushes at the back of Bucky’s head, beckoning him down, to lie on top of Steve, hands on the couch cushions, legs dangling.

They neck that way, gleeful. Steve gnawing on him like a rawhide bone, Bucky sucking desperately at Steve’s lips and tongue, both of them slobbering. It’s a precarious operation, stopping Steve from sliding off the couch and to the rug. Bucky has to hold Steve’s sleeve in his fist. In response, Steve’s legs come up to circle Bucky’s waist, pulling him closer. Purposefully or not, threatening to pull him all the way over and onto the rug too.

Probably purposefully.

Bucky whines, not purposefully. Responding to the hand tightening its grip on his ass. He pushes back, wanting, and cuts off the kiss to nuzzle Steve’s neck. At some point, he got hard. Finally, he’s physically processing that he began the day being kidnapped by Bat-Man. It all comes off the back burner, where it’s been simmering, and his body’s scalding, bubbling ready to go. Rutting empty-headed against Steve’s thigh.

He kisses the underside of Steve’s chin and whines again. “Steve, please.” Steve’s hand is still spanning the back of his head; he’s been allowing the nuzzling, but now he tugs Bucky’s head back, sharply enough that his eyes sting.

“Yeah?” Steve’s breath falls a couple inches short of ragged. “What?” He shakes Bucky a little. “You want something.” He digs his nails into Bucky’s ass, and Bucky moans. “Tell me what you want.”

“Please. Can I—A lot’s happened today and it’s, uh. Vacation. I’m—Am I allowed to come?”

“Uh-uh. You want to get off, you crawl outside right now.” He smacks him on the ass. And then smacks him again, harder. “You don’t earn your first one until you’ve got some dirt on you. Capisce?”

“Crystal.” 

“Idiot.” Another smack, thrusting Bucky’s hips forward so his stiffening dick, in his pajama pants, drags along Steve’s denim-clad thigh, and then Steve lets go of his hair and shoves Bucky backward by the shoulders, into standing. Bucky stumbles and catches himself. He’s already getting dizzy with it. “I said ‘crawl.’ You not listening?”

“I got it, I got it.” He drops to the floor. His patellae crack on the wood. The skin there might bruise if they’re lucky. 

Pushing up off the couch, Steve looks at him pointedly, and motions with his finger for Bucky to turn around. Bucky shuffles in a little circle, like an animal getting ready to go to sleep, until his ass points at Steve. He begins crawling toward the door, but he’s stopped by Steve’s hand grabbing his tee-shirt’s hem.

“Uh! Hold up a second.”

“You said to crawl! I’m getting mixed messa—” The word explodes into a gasp with the impact of Steve’s fist against one cheek of his ass. Pain round and hard as a rubberband ball where the knuckles dig in, but it grows dull, heavy, sinking through the fat to reach his muscle, to find the center of him and live there, and he says, “Steve,” and Steve punches him on the other side, and he gasps again, arching his back, letting his eyes shut for a moment on a happy sigh.

“Now,” Steve says like nothing happened, “I know I told you to crawl. But I figured ‘naked’ was kinda implied. Didn’t you?” He pushes Bucky’s shirt up, baring his back, scoring four lines up the revealed skin with his nails and Bucky hisses but holds still as the shirt’s yanked over his shoulders, until the collar’s stuck halfway up his head, masking his face, the sleeves bunched halfway down his arms. Steve clears his throat. “Didn’t you?”

“No, I wasn’t thinking.” He’s practically yelling, probably overestimating how much the shirt muffles his voice, but that should be pretty funny for Steve, so that’s fine. “Sorry. Should’ve been obvious. Can I—”

“Excuse me?”

“May I take the shirt off now?”

Steve strokes the scratch marks, scratching a perpendicular line over one to earn the skipping, shifting of Bucky’s muscles. He draws out, “Welllll—” but then—“Shit, the cooler.”

“What? What’s the—Oh. It’s a cooler. It cools. It’ll keep.”

“Yeah, I’m gonna take scientific advice from the stupid slut crawling around on the floor, sure. Gimme a second to put that shit away. And finish stripping.” He smacks Bucky’s hip.

Bucky complains inarticulately, but sits up to pull the shirt off and toss it toward the couch. While he kicks off his unlaced boots and shimmies out of his pants, he watches Steve grab the cooler from by the door, swinging it like it’s a dainty pocketbook and not an enormous box laden with two supersoldiers’ worth of calories.

Steve didn’t tell him to stay how he was, so he sits his bare ass on the wooden floor, trying to force the ache from Steve’s fists in deeper. The floor, where the oriental rugs end, has got some tooth and grit to it—the rustic charm the listing advertised—so he shifts around, seeking the roughness, imagining how it would feel to sit down here after Steve’s beat him raw.

Steve, with his head in the icebox and two rotisserie chickens under one arm, snaps his fingers in Bucky’s direction and calls, “Hey! Hands and knees over there.”

Getting in position, Bucky yells back, “You guessing, or you can really tell?”

One bright flash of Steve’s teeth in his direction before he buries himself arranging groceries again. “Guessing, but thanks for the confession.”

“Always happy to get, uh. Hoisted by my own petard? I’m not using that correctly.”

“Nah.” Steve slams the icebox door shut, plonks a bunch of bananas and a scattering of apples onto the kitchen island, and stalks toward Bucky. “You’re really not. But it’s _very_ adorable that you tried. Now where were we?”

“I was—”

“Oh!” And he kicks Bucky’s right arm out from under him so he flops forward. “That?”

“No,” Bucky growls from the floor. “I was _trying_ to crawl outside.”

“So?” Steve shrugs. “Crawl. Who’s stopping you?”

“Yeah, all right there.” He straightens his slain arm and heads for the door, fast, the wood floors abrading his skin, and Steve kicks his arm out from under him again, and because Bucky was moving this time, he shrieks in surprise, and rolls onto his back like a turtle in need of some human compassion.

Steve says, “Oops.”

Bucky raises his eyebrows. “You’re having too much fun.”

“Am I?” He slips the toe of his boot under Bucky’s thigh like he’s going to flip him. A compassionate human. But he doesn’t follow through. His lips are pursed tight, because of course if he lets his obvious delight escape his mouth, it might cause a nuclear reaction. Might raze this whole cabin and the field and the woods.

Bucky smiles at him, dopey with it, fucking _glittery_ inside, and says, “No. You could even stand to have more fun, I think.”

“Yeah? Then fucking crawl like I told you. Jesus, the higher altitude’s making you even stupider than usual.”

“Sorry about that. At least I’m low to the ground.”

“Yeah, maybe I oughta dig a hole for you to sleep in. Get you even lower.” 

“I wouldn’t complain, but you’ll like where we’re sleeping. I promise.” That gets a raised eyebrow, but Bucky puts his finger to his lips. It’s a surprise. Steve nods.

Bucky shows himself some compassion, flips himself over, and Steve, tired of kicking his arm, comes around in front of him when he gets a couple feet from the door, and grabs Bucky’s loose hair. Walks without looking back, holding it like a leash behind him, so Bucky screams and rushes to follow, half-dragged onto the porch. He’s excited to scrape his knees going down the porch steps, but Steve doesn’t let him.

Steve lifts him off the ground by the hair and tosses him onto the grass, steps bypassed entirely. Bucky rolls, landing on his back with an, “Oomph!” Mouth and eyes wide. The sky’s beautiful today, bright and barely cloud-streaked. Just like the forecast claimed when he was making reservations, but he checked so far ahead of time that those predictions were reliable as an umbrella made of sugar. 

Steve clicks his fingers and starts walking. “Come on. ’Round where we parked. I think I saw a hose there.” Another flash of teeth as he glances back. “You see a hose?”

Hurrying to his hands and knees, Bucky says, “Yeah,” but, “Bad for the hose if you tie me up in it.”

“Oh?”

“You’ll have to get the kinks out.”

“Of you? I’ve tried. It ain’t happening. Good thing that’s not my plan.”

“Oh, you’ve _tried_ . You’ve made _every effort_ to beat the masochism outta me. ‘Cause it benefits you not at all, right?”

“Exactly.” They get in sight of the car, where it’s pulled up just short of crashing into the cabin. “Show my years of hard work on that front some respect.”

A garden hose is coiled tight over a tap protruding from the wall, held together with a big clip. Whistling cheerfully, Steve unclips, uncoils, holds the hose’s neck tight in one hand while most of its body trails limply over the ground. The hose is a lucky fucking bastard. Bucky’s body _never_ reaches that degree of limp and floppy.

Steve gets the water turned on to a forceful pressure, aiming at where the ground and the side of the cabin meet, standing far enough away that there’s minimal splash-back. Then he looks over his shoulder and says, “Think fast,” and his hand and the muscles in his back twitch like he’s going to turn the spray on Bucky, who flinches hard, almost toppling over, squeezing his eyes shut, bracing for impact.

Nothing. Steve’s still aiming the hose at the wall. Bucky scowls, and Steve smiles and turns the tap off, dropping the hose to the dirt.

“Hey,” he says, crouching down. Stroking the back of Bucky’s neck. “Hey there, jumpy. It’s not for you. It’s for the dirt. Don’t act so entitled as to think I’d waste good water on something like you. Would I do that?” The hand on his neck grips firmly. “Would I?”

  


-

Shortly after Bucky’s secret admirer mailed him dirt, Steve asked, on the table in the dark, with Bucky’s face tucked between his shoulder blades, “Can I ask about the water pressure?”

Bucky mumbled into his sweatshirt, “Still a thing, yeah.”

“All right. But is it. The sensation itself, or is the anticipation—I don’t know how to ask this right.” The ice-skating sound of his front teeth grinding together in frustration.

Bucky slid his hand up from Steve’s hip to hold his shoulder. Crossing his arm over Steve’s torso like a seatbelt. Readying him for any impact. Beneath his forearm, Steve’s heart pounded in its slow, sure way. Bucky said, “You asking if you can. Fuck with me about it? Right?”

“I guess. If you thought I was maybe gonna. That going too far?”

Bucky didn’t answer immediately, and Steve didn’t push him. A little bit ago, auto-piloting on the walk home from the train station, he didn’t notice a guy hosing down the sidewalk, and the guy wasn’t paying any attention to him either. At the first surprise harsh kiss of the spray to his legs, bare in their Casual Friday shorts, Bucky went cold, and stumbled back. The guy acknowledged him with a grunt and an, “Oh, sorry, man,” and Bucky waved like, _It’s all cool_ , and darted to the other side of the street, head down, despite the hose being off now, making way for him. But that was more from embarrassment than anything else, and he’d quieted his nerves by the time he got home in a way he didn’t think he could if he’d been hit full-on, hard blast, no escape.

And—He pulled his eyes from the sheet-covered hulking phantom of the Pac-Man machine, and blinked at the curve of Steve’s ear. At the place where his hair met his neck and darkened. A thought: Steve there, noticing the guy, and shoving Bucky toward the spray, but reeling him in at the last second, soon enough to save him but not so soon fear wouldn’t flash like lightning through his chest, and then laughing in Bucky’s ear.

Bucky kissed between Steve’s shoulder blades. He said, “You can trick me. Tricking me’s all good.”

  


-

“No,” Bucky says from the ground, straining forward to kiss Steve’s knee. “What’d I do to deserve that?”

“Exactly. So no getting sprayed by that thing for you, mister.” He kisses Bucky’s cheek, and stands. “Just making some mud.”

“Making me mud pies?”

“Oh, now you’re so entitled you think I’m _baking_ for you?” He settles one boot on Bucky’s back, not pushing yet. “You know what? No more hands and knees.” The slightest pressure. “Down.” Bucky drops, turning his face to the side. “Roll over, boy.” The boot moves to kick at his ribs.

On his back, he can see that Steve’s flushed. Crazy-eyed and intensely focused on Bucky’s face when he says, “See? Much less dignified. More fitting. Now stay there.” The boot hovers over his soft stomach. Bucky gulps. “And stay quiet while I get things ready for you. Yes?”

“Yes, Steve.”

Steve smiles in the way that means _Good enough_ and goes to work making mud. No longer threatening. Turning the water on, he calls, “Come to think of it, jerk yourself off while you’re down there?”

“But don’t come?”

“What’d I say? No. Not until you’ve got some dirt on you.” Over-the-top conversationally: “Maybe not even then. You got dirt on you?”

“Some. Kinda.” Under his nails. Faint smears on his calves and knees from crawling.

“’Some.’ Please. That’s nothing. That’s casual wear and tear. You come before I say, that’s your last time the whole trip.”

“I won’t. I wouldn’t.” Unless Steve tricks him, pushes him so far he loses control, but Bucky doesn’t think that’s the game plan. Whether or not he’ll object if that seems to be the game plan, he’s not sure.

Either way, it doesn’t matter right now. He gets a hand around his dick, grip loose, and works himself with slow strokes, closing his eyes to keep the sun out. The hose turns on, that scaled-down waterfall sound, and his perception’s sharp enough he can tell it’s too far away to be a threat. Steve’s whistling the Bat-Man theme song. Bucky huffs a laugh and bites down on his lip. Focuses on keeping his stroking lazy, disinterested, generating pleasure like white noise instead of anything more urgent.

Steve calls to him, “All right, you can stop,” and the hose’s spray and Bucky’s jerkoff session end simultaneously. Bucky twists his shoulders to look at Steve, who’s re-coiling the hose to hang up. “Come over here.”

As he crawls, the ground grows damp, and closer still it turns to the mud he was promised, syrupy and thick and cool, _slorch_ ing beneath him. His knees and palms sink a bit with each step, slowing his pace, which is for the best. Crawling through deep dark ooze, making stupid, ugly noises just by moving through the world—that’s the kind of experience you want to draw out.

Steve’s waiting on more solid ground, dryer ground. Bucky pulls up short of him. Gets on his knees and puts his hands on his thighs. Steve kicks the left hand. “Lift those.” Two muddy handprints on his skin. Steve raises an eyebrow. “You’re making a mess, Buck. Here.”

He squats down. The toes of his boots cross over the dividing line between what Bucky considers real mud and the dirt that’s just unpleasantly damp. Steve holds Bucky’s wrist and steers the palm to Bucky’s mouth. The plates have locked up tight and waterproof.

Bucky says, “Sorry. You know how I am.”

“That’s fine. But clean it up.”

Delight spins Bucky’s heart like the Wheel of Fortune and blood goes to his face. He flattens his tongue against his palm and cleans up the mud in a few broad licks. Sucks mud off his fingers. It tastes pleasant. Like corn chips, and he licks his lips after.

Steve says, “How is it?”

“It’s. Really nice, actually. Mineral? The other hand—May I—?”

“Hmm. Nah. If it’s so good, I want in on this.”

“Oh. Yeah, of course. Have a bite, why don’t you? Pull up a chair.”

Steve brings the other hand to his mouth and cleans it up the same as Bucky did with the left. But slower. Maintaining eye contact. Swirling his tongue around each finger and sucking with hollowed cheeks. Under that attention, Bucky’s hand feels preposterously dainty. Something clad in pink silk and easily flustered. Steve finishes and puts both of Bucky’s hands where they were, flat on his thighs.

“Much better than you usually taste,” he says, and skritches behind Bucky’s ear. “We should coat you in dirt more often.”

“No better time than the present. Look how convenient.” Bucky nods his head at the mud.

“Very convenient. But I had a different thought. You know, Buck,” he says, like they’ve just been teleported to the set of an infomercial and the cameras are rolling, “exercise is good for the brain.”

“Oh yeah? Well, we know my brain needs all the help it can get.”

“Exactly.” As he talks, he absentmindedly scoops handfuls of mud onto Bucky’s chest, massaging it, slick and decadent, into his skin. Avoiding his nipples. “And I know you’re thinking, ‘But Steve, I’m so weak and clumsy and pathetic, not a gold medal Olympic athlete like you! Remembering which leg goes in front of the other could take me all day!’”

“You sound like a Wheaties commercial. Why do your eyebrows always squirm around your face when you do that voice?”

“’Cause on the radio, no one can see your eyebrows. And in a perfect society, no one’d ever have to see yours either.” He licks Bucky’s eyebrow. Swipes a muddy thumb over one nipple in a bright burst of pleasure. Bucky gasps. “Where was I?”

“I’m weak and clumsy and pathetic. What kinda exercise could I possibly do?”

“I already saw you try to crawl. I can’t imagine you’re any better at running. We’ll keep it simple. Sit-ups and push-ups. I’ll even count for you, since we know you’d just fuck that up.” 

“Aw, that’s so sweet. You know I have trouble with that ‘1-2-‘6-7-9-5-3,’ business, or however it goes.”

“I sure do. So lie down now, on your back, and I’ll worry about all that bullshit for you,” Bucky flops backward, but Steve grabs his bicep, catching him before the mud can splatter. “Sorry. Just—” He pulls a knit beanie out of his pocket. “Here.” He stuffs all Bucky’s hair beneath it, pulling it snug, while Bucky looks at him like actually he pulled a rabbit out of his jeans and then a hat out of the rabbit.

“Uh, Steve?”

“What? Look, you want your hair full of mud I’ll take it off, but I’m not gonna be letting you wash up any time soon. So.” He pats the top of Bucky’s head; through the giant mushroom of hair now up there, it feels like practically nothing. Bucky’s the princess and Steve’s the pea. “Hat, or mud caked in your hair indefinitely.”

Bucky smiles big, closes his eyes, and finishes flopping into the mud. The splash isn’t as good as it would’ve been had he not been interrupted, but you lose some, you win some giant freak who feeds you mud and then authoritatively fusses over your hair care. “Hat,” he says. His knees poke into the air, feet flat in the mud. Sit-up-ready.

“That’s what I thought.” Weight comes down on his raised knees; when he opens his eyes, it’s Steve’s folded arms. Steve’s chin is propped on one hand. Bucky lifts an arm to touch Steve, to—He doesn’t even know. Hold his hand? But Steve scowls at him, and he drops his arm immediately. “What are you doing? Get your hands behind your head. I gotta think of everything around here?”

“Maybe.” He laces his fingers behind his head. Now he’s all laid out for Steve, pale underbelly exposed, and his flushed and steadily drooling dick on display along with it. “Sorry. I just like you.”

“Funny lack of self-preservation you got there, buddy.” Inching forward, he brings his knees onto the tops of Bucky’s feet. Holding him down more fully.

Pinned and effectively limbless in the mud, Bucky says, “Oh. Yeah, well. That’s why you’re here. To take care of me and all.”

“Aw, you say that _now_.” His thumb rubs at the inside of Bucky’s knee, tender. “You better start doing sit-ups like I told you if you don’t wanna find out sooner how wrong you are. Come on.” Another finger joins the thumb to pinch him, to twist the skin, and Bucky yelps and curls upward obediently. “Come on, there you go. There’s my ugly little flopping worm.”

Bucky lowers himself, relishing the soft squelch, how he’ll softly squelch each time. “One. You’re not counting?”

Steve just gives him a hard look. Won’t answer until Bucky tugs himself upward again. “I’m counting. Who said I was counting aloud?” As Bucky’s returning to the dirt, Steve catches the tip of his nose between two knuckles and squeezes.

In a rush, not wanting to miss the nasal sound of his own voice if Steve lets go, Bucky says, “No one,” and Steve releases him. Numberless, Bucky keeps lifting and lowering his torso, working muscles that won’t cramp and burn unless they’re at this for hours. The sun’s movement across the sky would keep time for him while he became a metronome, back-forth-back-forth, squelching instead of clicking, Steve falling asleep heavy on top of him.

“That’s right,” Steve says. “I don’t see much point telling you what number you’re on when you won’t know what it means. What if I told you you’d done a hundred?”

“Oh, I did?” Each curl upward, his bunched abdominal muscles and stomach fat stroke his dick in a strange, blink-and-miss it tumble of heady sensation. He could jerk himself to completion like this if Steve wanted. Come a million times while he metronomed, while Steve slept.

“No, you useless fucking dunce. See what I mean?”

“Is a hundred not what comes after eight?” Sweat drips down his forehead and the back of his neck, the black knit hat and his massive hair trapping the heat. Steve wipes it up with one finger before it can get in his eyes, and Bucky smiles, grateful.

What that gets him, on the next upward crunch of his body, is smacked across the face. “Keep going,” Steve says. And on the next crunch he’s smacked too, other side, stove-burner-hot, perfectly timed with his own flesh incidentally stroking his erection, and he keens.

“ _Steve_.”

“Yes?” Curl up, friction, smack, the _squelch_ and mud kissing his neck, his shoulders, coating his spine. He rises into the slap across his face, this one backhanded, twisting his head so he pauses, hanging in the air, before remembering to go down.

“I don’t know. Steve. Love you.”

Steve says, “I’m bored,” sounding anything but, and the intended cold dismissal zings up Bucky’s spine. He lifts, wants to lift himself all the way into Steve, to slam into him, into the hand that’ll smack him, but Steve grabs his bicep and pulls him into sitting. Glaring, he repeats, “I’m bored.” And on Bucky’s arm, in Morse code, he taps, _Love you._

Bucky’s eyes flick to Steve’s hand. Thanking the messenger. Adoring the messenger. He licks his lips. “Sorry. What should I do?”

“Be less fucking boring, Buck, what do you think? Come on, up. Push-ups now. Turn over for me, baby. Here, give me this thing.”

He yanks the hat off Bucky’s head, and the hair doesn’t fall down smoothly. Must be all tangled and haphazard up there, and in such short time. Bucky blushes about it. “How’s it look?”

“Looks like I’d hate to meet the giant plague rat living in there.” But he tugs it all downward, finger-combing and floofing. His fingers catch in a knot and yank, and Bucky yelps. “You’re fine. Here. Open up.” Bucky holds his jaw wide, and Steve stuffs the mud-covered beanie inside. “Suck on that a sec.”

Bucky sucks on it hard, drooling around the gross fabric. Corn chips and wet wool. He wishes he could eat the whole hat. _If Steve tells me to_ , he thinks, _I’ll eat my hat_! Giggles threaten to explode from him, and he shoves them down so he won’t gag, sits on them like they’re a suitcase so packed full of clothes it won’t fasten shut. His eyes are wide as he sucks and doesn’t laugh, watching the focused set of Steve’s mouth. Firm fingers on his scalp. Drawing circles and tugging loops and knots free.

Then Steve’s mouth turns satisfied. One hand grabs all the hair up into a ponytail, and he yanks the hat out of Bucky’s mouth. Frowns at it, then tosses it over his shoulder.

“Hey,” Bucky says. “I was savoring that.” He licks the remaining mud taste from the insides of his own cheeks. Off his teeth, where it’s drying, grainy.

“Stop bitching. There’s plenty more where that came from. Over.” He yanks the ponytail to one side, twisting Bucky’s head, and Bucky rushes to turn the rest of his body over with it. But Steve’s not letting him drive here. With the ponytail as a handle and another hand wrapping around Bucky’s thigh, he flips Bucky over so he’s flat face-down in the mud.

Bucky barely manages to get his eyes shut in time, but he opens his mouth. Doesn’t actively eat or anything, but moves his lips like kissing, sticks his tongue in. Burying it. And maybe Steve’ll have him fuck the mud, drive his dick into the wet welcoming suction, which is growing warm from the heat of his body. How it wraps around him, coats his balls, is already so much, so sweet.

Steve uses the ponytail to pull his face out of the mud. “Enjoy your treat?”

“Love it. More please?”

“No. You’re doing push-ups. Be a good boy and get on your hands and knees.”

Bucky grumbles but obeys, depriving his junk of the mud or any other kind of touch. Blinking fast, mud caught in his eyelashes and turning the world blurry. “Steve, can you—My eyes.”

“Yeah, yeah.” Steve brings his hand around, letting Bucky’s hair go, and with his thumb, wipes at Bucky’s eyelids and lashes until they’re clean and good to go. “Now. Get in position.” As Bucky gets his legs out behind him, making his back flat and straight, fixing the angles of his arms, Steve stands. “Lower yourself.”

He does. “And now?”

“One moment.” Tone brooking no argument, he says, “Tell me if this feels wrong, or throw me off if you need to.”

He used to sit on Bucky's back for this, or stack things on him. Books, their shoes, Bucky's briefcase. A kitchen chair once, but that toppled off pretty fast. Not that it wasn't fun, how bad Steve beat him with a ruler as punishment for, “causing a racket and recklessly endangering good furniture. You think chairs grow on trees, Buck?”

To that, Bucky said, “Chair’s wood, Steve. I think it _is_ trees,” at which point Steve had him stick his chest out with his pecs pushed close together as he could get them. While he went at them with the flat of the ruler and a vengeance, turning his nipples swollen and throbbing and red, he berated Bucky for having such uselessly small tits, which was true enough, not like how his body is now. He was the rangy kind of muscled-up, small next to the other guys at the gym even though he could move fast and hit hard enough to put the fear of his fists in them.

Tears fell freely from Bucky’s eyes all the more persistently for how he wasn’t allowed to hide his burning face against his shoulder, to seek any sensation but the hits themselves and Steve’s other hand petting his hair. 

Saying that was fun is a major understatement. But the chair really was loud hitting the floor, so loud Bucky rolled onto his back and they stared at each other with wide spooked eyes, waiting for some unknown hell to rain down. And one of its legs wobbled for the rest of their—Well, the rest of that part of their lives.

Before _everything_ was wobbly.

If Steve had tried standing on him then—all the way, more than a single foot pressing down—he would have toppled off in a heartbeat. Banged himself up, maybe broken an ankle. But here in the twenty-first century, Steve steps right onto his back smooth as boarding an escalator. He says, “Now you can start.”

On the way up, Bucky makes a high noise in surprise. At how easy it is, how Steve’s body lifts toward the sky with no struggle. This feels like breaking the laws of physics, the laws of anatomy, but they both break those every second they’re alive, don’t they? That shouldn’t be so strange.

A faint memory of picking up a whole private jet with his hands alone and throwing it off the roof of a hotel swims past. Ripples like a lake in the wake of a skipped stone when he tries to grab it.

Steve says, “One,” and Bucky says, “Oh,” and lowers them both with his stomach swooping.

“Two” and “three” feel no less miraculous, more so even; he can’t remember how many mornings he woke up to Steve’s square jaw and hulking shoulders before he stopped marveling at the fact that Steve hadn’t turned back overnight, fairy godmother spell lifted.

Steve read his mind that first morning, catching how Bucky kept glancing at him while they walked. He said, “What, I didn’t turn back into a pumpkin?”

Bucky smiled the amount he could manage and shrugged one shoulder, turning his face away. “Didn’t turn back into a _rat_. You’re a coachman, not a golden carriage. Don’t be so full of yourself.” A golden coachman. The only thing keeping Bucky walking.

On the fifth time up, Steve doesn’t say, “Five.” Instead, he says, “Think you could still do this if I danced up here, Buck? Say I hung a punching bag from the sky and worked it over while standing on ya.” He crouches, his weight becoming a cannonball; he must be curled up tight to say laughingly in Bucky’s ear, “Think you could still stay strong for me? Be a good little floor?”

Bucky grunts. “Why not. Try and find out.”

“Who said I want to? I’m just thinking aloud. I’m thinking you’ll give me five more, me standing like I am, and if you’re real good about it, we can do something nicer.”

“Nicer?” Bucky dips so low he can kiss the mud. Lifting Steve is satisfying in the same way as holding a fresh-printed script, hot paper and fragrant ink and the font sturdy-looking, and tapping all the stack’s sides against a tabletop to get the pages even. 

“Six.” Steve stands. Taps his foot. “Nicer, yeah. You do all your chores, and you can have a treat. Seven.”

“Oh, my chores, right.”

“Yes? Something funny about that? Taking good care of my property’s not a chore? Eight. You’re so close. Even you shouldn’t fuck this up.” That tempts Bucky to fuck it up, to subject himself to the full force of Steve’s disappointment. But the idea of a treat, of something being done about his dick, with its slight slap against his stomach on each push upward—

Steve says, “Nine. Come on.” 

And ten’s nothing; ten’s pathetic, but they’ll both act like it’s a big accomplishment, embarrassing as if they threw a party because he managed to blow his own nose. Going with that, Bucky forces a strained grunt on this one, and Steve sounds indulgent when he says, “Ten. Hold it.”

And then he’s walking back and forth on Bucky’s back. Pacing. Leaving muddy footprints.

Detectives will come and swarm around Bucky where he’ll be shaking from still holding this pose days from now, and they’ll touch the footprints with gloved hands. Remark on the size, the probable brand. They’ll track Steve down, and stick him in a line-up, and when they ask Bucky, “Who did this? Whose dumb animal are you?” he’ll point at Steve proudly.

Bucky says, “Did I do okay?” and his heart flutters and face heats at Steve’s responding, “Barely.”

Steve hops off. His landing splashes more mud onto Bucky’s ribs. He says, “You did everything I told you to. You want a treat?”

“Yes. Yes, please. Can I come now, Steve? Please. Please, Christ.”

“Nah. I don’t think so.” Steve’s boot presses on his back, and he lets it flatten him, so he face-plants in the mud. He looks up at Steve, wishing he were crying both for maximum pleading effect and just for the release of it. “I didn’t mean that at all. I think we should have some more fun first. Don’t you?”

“I’m. It’s not my—Whatever you think, Steve.”

“That’s right. Come on.” He whistles like he’s calling a dog to him, and grabs Bucky’s hair. “Let’s go play pool, boy.” 

“Oh. Okay I—Ouch!” He fumbles around getting his hands and knees under him, scalp already screaming from the foot or so Steve’s dragged his flat and dead-weight body. “Yeah, pool, okay, okay.” The hand leaves his hair as soon as he’s propelling himself forward, trotting along. To match Steve’s pace, he moves in small, speedy steps like a toy poodle. Viewed from far off, his limbs must be blurs.

“There we go!” Steve says, high and sweet. Encouraging his dumb tiny fast-walking animal. “That’s right. I knew you still had some fight in you.”

“Some. Sure. Always.” He scrunches his eyebrows up at Steve, who’s pretending not to be keeping an eye on him. “Pool for real? We’re playing pool?”

“Not yet, we’re not. I know, chronology confuses me too.”

“ _Steve_.”

“Sure,” he says easily. “We’re playing pool.” He holds the door open for Bucky to enter first, and slams and locks it behind them. The shuddering doorframe and small click of the lock sound like a promise. This is where Bucky’s being put; this is where he’s staying until Steve says otherwise. “Go to the table. Come on. You can stand when you’re there.”

He says it like a kindness, but Bucky’s body, when he reaches the pool table tucked away in a corner, the green topped with an enormous bread slice of sun from the peculiarly un-curtained window, isn’t interested in standing. He lifts into a kneel, then sighs and slumps. Eyes the side of the table, which he _could_ use to lever himself into standing. But he’d rather wait here pathetically for Steve, who didn’t _order_ him to stand or anything, only gave him the option. 

Here’s Steve now, hand on the top of Bucky’s head, boot on Bucky’s thigh. “Said you could stand.”

“I know. Gimme a hand?”

“Yeah, all right. High-maintenance fuck.” He crouches, and gets an arm under Bucky’s armpit, curling his hand around the opposite ribs, and lifts. Bucky comes with, swaying a little, and bounces his forehead off Steve’s shoulder when they’re all straightened up.

He says, “Oh, you know me. Need a hand. Need special pet food. Gotta be taken in for tune-ups and tire rotations at _least_ twice a month.”

“Tell me about it. And the number of combs and conditioners you got?”

“Well, that’s not _your_ problem.” He kisses Steve’s shoulder and grins, hoping Steve can feel.

“Yeah, it’s my problem when you’ve got ten bottles lined up on the tub edge and I knock ’em over getting in.” He pulls Bucky’s head back by the hair, and Bucky tries to look apologetic.

He doesn’t think he pulls it off, and he ruins it anyway by saying, “Maybe look where you’re going.”

Steve yanks his hair harder, growling, before releasing him. “I oughta hurt you more for that, but it’s time to play pool. You remember the rules?”

“Real rules or—”

“Yeah, asshole.” The pointed grope he gives Bucky’s ass when he calls him that, fingers brushing close to his hole, slices through to Bucky’s center. An asshole’s all he is. “The rules to eight-ball. You remember?”

“Sure. Big stick. Walk softly. Ball goes in pocket. Money goes in my hand assuming we put any down.” He’s getting a second wind. Brain sharpening in anticipation, body remembering how to be upright.

“That’s about all of them, but you’re forgetting. Rules of taking care of the equipment.” Steve holds up a little blue block of cue chalk that’s been waiting on the table’s edge.

Bucky reaches for it. “Yeah, you—”

“Uh-uh.” Steve pulls it away. “You don’t remember. But that’s okay. I do. It goes like this.” He dips his finger in the indent. Really swirls it around in there, like he’s screwing himself into a socket. “C’mere.”

Re-dipping his finger as needed, he chalks up each of Bucky’s nipples. Turns them blue with little electrifying swipes while Bucky makes breathy noises and holds still. Then the head of Bucky’s cock. That takes a lot more chalk. And a lot more self-control on Bucky’s part. When he stuffs his right hand into his mouth and bites down, Steve’s eyes flick up at him.

“What? What’s the problem?” He rubs more blue in, slowly. “I’m just tryna follow the rules here and you look like you’re having an acid trip.”

Bucky empties his mouth of his own body parts and makes a _yip_ sound at Steve’s ministrations. “I’m just. Really excited to play pool with you, Steve.”

“Aw. Me too, buddy.” The next swipe of blue’s the last, and Steve kisses him after. Then says,

“Hmm,” and holds the chalk up to his eye like a spyglass, frowning. “This goes on something else too, right?”

“Wow, does it? Any idea what?”

“I think—” Purposeful, as if he’s slipping a needle into a vein, Steve puts more blue on his finger. And smears it, quick-like, onto Bucky’s nose. “There! That looks right!” He sounds so pleased with himself that Bucky can’t remember how to do anything on purpose with his face, or say anything smart. Or do anything but take Steve’s hand in his and squeeze it while his mouth flips and tumbles around.

Steve squeezes back, jovially smacks him on the shoulder, and walks off. Says, “I’ll get the cue. You rack.” A moment later, he’s located the rack and flung it in Bucky’s direction but a few feet higher than Bucky’s head.

Bucky jumps and grabs it out of the air. “On it.”

The balls need to be retrieved from the table’s deep leather pockets. They click pleasingly against his hand. Placed on the green and nudged, they roll all toward one side, where he’s got the rack waiting. They start falling into place, and so does he.

It’s been a long time, but this is math and physics, done with his body. A kind of thing he knows he knows how to do. Clean and simple, and Steve’s gonna wreck it, dirty it up. Already, he’s dirtied Bucky up, gotten him mud-encrusted, worn and turned on. Pre-gaming—that’s what Steve’s been doing. Getting them both tipsy off Bucky’s vulnerability.

Inviting other guys over to match his old fantasy is out of the question on several dozen different fronts. But Steve, by himself, given full reign to dictate Bucky’s reality, is always gonna be the biggest, best, and meanest audience Bucky could ever ask for.

As he’s arranging the balls, Steve steps in close behind him. “You getting them in there nice and tight?” He sweeps Bucky’s hair to the side, and kisses his neck. Murmurs, “You don’t keep it nice and tight, we’ll have a problem.”

“Christ, Steve.”

Steve hums, then buzzes his lips against Bucky’s skin. Ticklish in specifically that spot, Bucky squirms, shoulders jumping, and breathy giggling spills from his mouth. Steve pushes his jumpy shoulders down, and does it again, so Bucky’s laughter comes out higher. The rack shifts with a _clack_ under his hands.

“ _Steve_ , I’m trying to do what you told me. You want me to do it right or not?”

“You fuck it up, you don’t get to blame that on me.” Still, he relents, shoving at Bucky’s head. Grabbing his cue from where it’s propped up against the table.

“Thank you.” But before shuffling the eight ball to center stage, he puts it by itself on the green. Waving his hands over it, making meaningful eye contact with Steve, he tries to put Lorna Gray’s voice in his mouth, recreated from choppy memories of seeing _You Nazty Spy_ in theaters an entire two times. He says, “Spirits are sending me a message.”

Steve snorts and flips him off. “Is this the message?”

“Huh, look at that. I think so.” He plops the ball into the rack where it belongs. “What d’ya think it means?”

Steve bats his eyelashes at him. “Hurry the fuck up and I bet you’ll find out.”

And that’s a hell of a motivating force. He checks that the balls are arranged right, nice and tight, and slips them forward so the triangle’s tip covers that faded spot on the green. Uncaged from the wood rack, the balls remain huddled in shapely anticipation.

“There,” he says, and rubs his fingers on the triangle’s barely rough wood, holding it in both hands, watching the motions of metal and skin over the grain. Steve clears his throat, and Bucky’s pulled out of the moment.

He deer-in-the-headlights at Steve, and Steve says, “Hmm,” licking his lips, and when he takes the rack from Bucky’s hand, replacing it with an already-chalked break cue, he holds it next to Bucky’s face, as though searching for a familial resemblance.

“Steve?”

“That’s me.” Steve smiles, and flicks Bucky’s cheekbone. “Break.” He goes to hang the rack up.

“I don’t break on command,” Bucky jokes even as he’s bending at the waist, forward onto the green, adjusting the relationship between the cue and his hands. “Commanding’s part of the breaking me process, but it’s not so simple as that, pal.”

“You wanna shut up?” Steve says, pushing down laughter.

“Not really, but if I must.” He shuts up. He does math with his body. Two striped balls disappear into the same pocket. He waves goodbye to them. “Not to brag, but guess I’m still an okay shot.”

“That’s undeniably bragging, Buck. And second of all: we’ll see.” 

“Didn’t say you _weren’t_ an okay shot.”

“I don’t recall saying you did.” He returns the break cue to the holder and grabs the playing cue. There’s only one out; apparently, they’re sharing; how intimate Setting his sights on two solids paired off like they’re going dancing, like he needs to match Bucky ball-for-ball, Steve bends over the table. His form’s not fantastic, but Steve makes do with wonky technique in all kinds of areas of his life and always has. “But I stick by what _I_ said: We’ll.” He slides the cue through his fingers, and it’s not nearly as suggestive as Bucky’s brain and dick make it out to be. “See.”

The cue connects with the five ball. Both that and the two ram their way into the side of the table where Bucky’s standing, and drift off in separate directions, neither landing anywhere near a pocket. Steve stares at Bucky with a small mouth like daring him to say something. Bucky shrugs. “Better luck ne—”

“Nope.”

“You’re the sorest goddamn loser, you know that? Not even losing yet, and still here you are.”

“Mmm. I know a certain someone who’s gonna be a lot sorer than me by the time we’re done here.”

Fondness thrums like a hummingbird’s pulse through Bucky. Through his dick. Through his neck and flushed face and tightening abs. Sure, lust and anticipation and that chilled edge of fear too, but—Fondness. That’s the best word to bundle all those other things up inside. “I should hope so.”

He catches the cue when Steve tosses it over the table, and baton-spins it, examining the playing field. Under his breath, he says the number and pocket he’s going for, for his own sake, before dipping low.

The cue’s lined up and sliding through his fingers, the coil in a pinball machine pulled and lengthening, when Steve’s palm lands high up on the inside of Bucky’s thigh, a hot shock cracking louder than the sound of the cue against the ball when he jumps and yelps and his aim goes screwy and the ball strolls leisurely away from where he needs it to be. Knocks into a striped ball casual as bumping shoulders in a crowd.

Bucky stays bent over, eyes on the ball, willing it to return. Steve runs a hand down his spine, to the top of his ass, and pauses there proprietarily. “Gosh, Buck,” he says. “That wasn’t your best work, was it?”

“No.” He looks at Steve over his shoulder. “That was pretty shitty. What do you think’s wrong with me?”

“You got all day?”

“Well.” Bucky stands and turns, hands braced behind him, and kicks at Steve’s ankle. “Kinda, yeah. Got a few all days, matter of fact, you wanna start listing.”

Steve ruffles Bucky’s hair and kisses him on the nose. He takes the cue. “Nah. I’m sure I’ll mention ‘em all by the time we’re back in the city.”

“Yeah, just by making small talk?” 

“Exactly.” Steve lines up a shot, and this time does land two balls in a corner pocket. He studies the table as he rounds it, closing one eye. “Talking about how small and pathetic you are.” For his next trick, he shoots without looking, lining up but then trying to show off by taking his eyes off the ball and instead smirking at Bucky while the stick connects with the ball and fails to pocket anything.

Bucky laughs at him.

Steve says, “Yeah, watch me wipe that laughter right off your face.” And he makes good on his threat.

Bucky’s next shot’s fumbled with a twitch of his hands and low moan, and Steve’s laughter in his ear, Steve’s body draped over his. Things don’t exactly start looking up from there.

Every time Steve pockets something, he fucks the next shot up so Bucky’s turn can come sooner. So his turn to mess with Bucky can come sooner. That’s the real game. Bucky will be bent over, leaned forward, whole table reduced to shapes and angles and arrows in his head, everything _clear_ ; he’ll have his shot lined up, and be ready to hit with the exact right amount of force; and Steve will smack him.

Or pinch him. Or claw at his lower back. Or casually spread his ass open wide and spit on his hole, which is definitely a foul of some kind.

“They do _not_ let you do that in a pool hall, Steve,” he groans, head buried in his arms on the table. Whatever his arm did when his mind blanked out, he pocketed the cue ball _and_ one of Steve’s balls with it. “That is cheating.”

“What’s cheating? Just giving my fella some encouragement while he plays? Just cheering him on?”

“Yeah? You cheering into my asshole?”

Steve pats his ass consolingly. “Come on. Head off the table. Watch me closely. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

He doesn’t learn anything, except that Steve’s a massive showboating dick. So yeah, he doesn’t learn anything. 

Then the eight ball’s all that’s left. Fenced in awkwardly by Bucky’s copious striped balls. Calling a pocket and shooting that thing in doesn’t seem like it’s gonna happen in Steve’s immediate future. Despite that, Steve circles the table like a helicopter, cue over his shoulder. Tapping his lips with one finger. Forcing Bucky to wait.

Bucky does wait, and he’s well-behaved about it, doesn’t even complain. But he’s obviously going to lose and something exciting’s obviously going to happen—Steve’ll deserve a prize for winning, won’t he?—and it’s getting more taxing to have to ignore his dick, which isn’t softening at all and in fact smeared wetness on his stomach at one point or another even though he’s hardly being touched, and on top of that—and ideally this would at least cancel out the first problem but through some hell miracle of his lab-bred biology it hasn’t—he’s getting _cold_.

Sure, it’s blazing hot out. And Steve’s been periodically warming his ass for him in short bursts. But this place is old and drafty, and the water content of the mud’s mostly evaporated. Valuable bits of his body heat hitched a ride with the water molecules, leaving him to shiver. Shivering’s typically something he can repress no problem, forcing himself to remain still in patient anticipation of regaining thermal equilibrium some other way.

But for Steve’s benefit, he plays it up. He allows an authentic ripple of cold to dart visibly through his legs and into his chest before fading away. The tooth-chattering that follows is 173% a conscious choice. He crosses his arms over his chest and rubs his upper arms with his hands, staring imploringly at Steve.

Steve ignores him, frown exaggerated as stage makeup. Bucky chatters his teeth louder, and throws in a whimper. Finally, Steve looks at him, and Bucky paints on his own theatrical frown.

Sighing, Steve raises an eyebrow. He places the cue on the green, and rounds the table to curl an arm around Bucky’s shoulders. Snugs him in tight to his side, allowing Bucky to leach some of that excessive body heat, and points at the table the same way he might point to the Big Dipper if they were stargazing and sharing a mug of hot cocoa. He says, cheerful as that, “This isn’t going well for you, is it?”

“No.” He turns his head to look at Steve, who’s still gazing at the constellation of clustered balls.

“ _Two_ balls, Buck? _Really?_ I thought you could do a little better. Three at least.”

“I could. I can. I’ll shoot one in for you now.”

Steve twists so he has a hand on each of Bucky’s shoulders, and they’re locking eyes.

“Obviously you can’t. I _could_ let you try, but I don’t see the point in humiliating you further. Do you?” He brushes his knuckles over Bucky’s cheek, and Bucky turns his face into the touch, kisses the back of Steve’s hand, eyelids lowering, feeling lax and dopey.

“Uh, well. I definitely see some points in that, but it’s not up to me now, is it?”

“Aw. That’s right.” And he backhands Bucky’s face low down, knuckles catching his cheek and jaw equally, turning his head, hot on his skin and sore deep in the bones. Bucky licks his lips and blinks his damp eyes rapidly. When he straightens his neck, Steve’s hand wraps around it. Not choking, but not anything to argue with either, forcing Bucky’s chin up. “So no more pathetic attempts from you. What do you say to that?”

“Thank you, Steve.”

“That’s right. But I _know_ that normally you’d pocket another one eventually. So something must be distracting you today. Something distracting you?”

“Oh, you know. Nothing much.” He swallows hard just to feel the motion of his throat against Steve’s palm. He flounders for a response. “Worried Hot Potato’s shoulder’s not looking too hot. You see how stiff he was moving last game?” And what the fuck is that? Is his mouth picking his sentences from a time traveling hat now? 

“Oh, yeah? That the answer you’re going with? I wanna be real nice and help you with your distraction, I should go do physical therapy on a guy who’s probably dead by now?”

“Nah. Just hit the library and figure out for me if he was ever injured. It’ll bug me for ages.”

“Bucky.” Amusement’s still got its fingerprints all over Steve’s voice, but he’s dropped into a lower register, and his eyes are narrowed. “Tell me what’s really distracting you.” The hand still on his shoulder jostles him, and he gasps, more startled than it makes any sense to be, chest tight. “And tell me what I can do to make it better. Right the fuck now. Politely.” 

“Oh. I’m—Okay. I’m distracted by my dick, Steve. I feel like if I don’t get off soon I’ll shatter. Like you’ll be looking at me through a kaleidoscope.”

“Hmm.” Steve’s gaze drops to Bucky’s dick He removes his hand from Bucky’s shoulder to bat at it, sending it bobbing, and Bucky hisses, abs clenching. “I guess I can see that.” He stares into Bucky’s eyes. “But what do you want me to do about it?”

“Fuck me, please? I’d really like if you fucked me, Steve. If you touched me more. Please. That would be great. That would be amazing.”

“Yeah? For you or for me?”

“Both? I’ll make it good for you. I’ll try hard to make it good. I can sing your favorite songs. Feed you grapes with one hand twisted up behind my back while you screw me brainless. Whatever. All of that. Any special requests, I’m takin’ ‘em.”

“Aw. Requesting’s for you, Buck. I don’t have to request, do I? What do I do when I want something from you?” His thumb drags up from Bucky’s neck. Pushes at his cheek so some flesh is forced between his molars. Bucky’s pulse kicks up and Steve’s mouth twitches in response.

“You take it from me?”

Steve snorts. “I was gonna say I order you. Some stuff I can’t just take. But some stuff I can. That’s a good point.” He noses at the hair around Bucky’s ears. “I want your hair? All I gotta do is lop it off. Stick it in a freezer bag.”

“Yeah. Could come up to me with scissors and I couldn’t complain.”

“But I _could_ also order you to cut it off. It’s nice.” He kisses the corner of Bucky’s eyebrow and pulls back, smiling at him. “Having so many options. Must suck only getting to request.”

“Free market over here too. I can request _and_ beg.”

“Aw, you sure can. So are you gonna beg me to fuck you?” He coos, “Gonna beg me to do somethin‘ about your poor dick?”

The hand on Bucky’s throat slithers down. Callouses stutter over one drawn-tight nipple so his first, “Please,” is swallowed in a gasp. “Please, Steve,” he tries again, and that hand comes up to tangle in his hair. To splay flat over his skull. “Please fuck me so I can focus on shit again. Maybe. One day. Realistically, not, uh, right after, but. My dick’s really hard right now and it’s a _problem_ and it’s one you know how to solve and I love watching you solve problems. Watching you solve me. Want you to put something in me and make me squirm and scream and cry and get me spilling out all over, please.” Steve smiles at him, encouraging, so he continues, “I would be really, _stupendously_ happy, and _so_ grateful—” Steve hand whips across his face, turning his head.

“Shut it.” Bucky’s face burns. He shuts it. He grins. “I was just asking if you were _gonna_ beg. If you were _intending_ to. I don’t wanna hear all that claptrap monologuing. I’ll do it.”

“Okay. Great. Perfect. Sorry. Thanks, sweetheart.”

“Hmm.” Steve spins him. Curls an arm around Bucky’s stomach and puts his stupid sharp chin on Bucky’s shoulder. “Can’t lay you down on the table like this, though. You’re all dirtied up.”

“Oh. Yeah. Not good enough for anything but the floor, right now. If that.”

“’If’ that? Where could I fuck you then?”

“Mid-air, obviously. Just pick me up with one hand, stick the other up my ass. No muss no fuss.”

“Seems like a lot of muss all over my clothes. And you’ve never not fussed a day in your life.” He bites the scruff of Bucky’s neck like he might lift him into the air that way instead. There’s dirt there, dry and itching. The blood goes to his neck, continues into his face. Steve lets go, and slaps him on the side of his thigh. “Stay. I’m getting something.”

Bucky nods, and hears Steve walk away and disappear into the bedroom, steps quieting when the hardwood turns to carpet. The faint sound of unzipping. He wants Steve’s teeth at his scruff. His nails there. He wants a loop of fabric stitched to that spot so Steve can hang him on a hook like a jacket. They’ll go on a museum date and Bucky will be left with coat check. Steve can Facetime him the art. After all, a thing like him can’t be trusted to not get up close and put his grubby little hands all over the canvases, or make out with the statues, desperately seeking love from anything that’ll stand still.

Anything that’ll stand him.

Another cold shiver crawls up his spine and spreads outward like wings, unrepressed, but that’s okay; Steve will return soon and get him hot.

A package of wet wipes gets set down on the table where Bucky can see. Then a beach towel printed with a whale and a sunset, draped over the table’s side. Steve’s hand grips Bucky’s right shoulder as he opens the package’s flap and takes one out. Bucky says, “Not gonna hose me off? Super nurturing of you.”

“I hose you off, I gotta dry you off too. Don’t think it’s got anything to do with your comfort.” Reaching around front, he wipes down Bucky’s chest and abdomen perfunctorily, leaving him damp and obscenely clean-smelling. How crayon drawings of the sun look like they should smell.

Used-up wipe stuffed in his jeans pocket, he sweeps a new one up Bucky’s throat, beneath his chin. “Eyes shut,” he says, and goes over Bucky’s cheeks and nose, eyelids, forehead, then behind his ears. Down the back of his bitten neck. That one goes in Steve’s pocket too. “Turn around, elbows on the table.”

Bucky obeys; the pose is an awkward parody of lounging, the table low and forcing his spine into a bridge. The hard points of his elbows on the green excavate a sense-memory from the cemetery in his brain. Leaning on a bar top, waiting for a drink. Trying too hard to look cool and nonchalant, knowing Steve was watching between other guys’ bodies, from across the crowded room. Bucky: still gangly and uncertain beneath new muscle, ostensibly an adult but knowing the truth of things. How vulnerable and needy and scared of everything he really was. Sticky bar top, low lights and low voices, glasses clinking together. Steve’s pale hair visible over by the wall, where he’d be slumped with his hands in his pockets.

Steve’s not slumped now; his hands aren’t in his pockets; his hair’s not flopping in his eyes like it would have been then, but he’s watching Bucky with the same intensity, and Bucky’s gangly and uncertain, vulnerable and needy, barely an adult at all. Dirt from his neck clings in the infinitesimal space between Steve’s top front teeth, and speckles a few on the bottom.

Steve’s tongue pokes between his dirty teeth, and he uses a new wipe on the dip beneath Bucky’s nose, in the divot of his chin, right below one eye. Detail work; polishing a beloved antique. And the same one journeys down the fronts of his thighs, which are filthy, encrusted; it takes three more to clean them along with his calves and feet, Steve crouching out of sight. He doesn’t linger on Bucky’s junk when he gets between his legs—the cool touch to the inner skin of his thighs makes him jump, and on his balls it makes him jump again, and Steve wraps the wipe around his dick and sweeps up and Bucky makes a little noise, plucked like a harp, but then that’s done.

Steve says, “Okay, now grab the towel and spread it on the table. Bend over. Legs spread too. Cock against the towel, Buck. Time to get the back of you.”

Bucky swallows, and moves the wet wipes as far to the side as he can, making room for the towel. It’s birthday-party-cheery, designed for a different kind of vacation than this, but here to protect the table from him, from his mess. The plush surface, against his dick, when he bends over, is overwhelming. Tender; he’s being pampered.

His ass is raised high for Steve, hips propped up on the table’s edge, his feet almost failing to reach the floor.

Steve says, “All right, gimme your hands,” and Bucky flattens his chest against the tabletop, bringing his arms behind him. He starts to cross his wrists and rest them on his spine, but Steve grabs his hands and uncrosses them. “Not what I said.” He sounds amused. “I’d have to be a real risk-taker to let something stupid as you just _guess_ what you oughta be doing.”

“Yeah, you’d never be one of those. You’re mild-mannered. Law-abiding.”

“That’s right. I like to walk on the safe, sunny side of the street.” He moves Bucky’s hands for him, putting one, palm-down, on each of Bucky’s ass cheeks.

“There we go. Just hold yourself wide open for me. Let me see what I’m working on.”

“Oh,” Bucky murmurs, closing his eyes, and does as he’s told. Pulls himself apart, exposing his hole to Steve, to the cool cabin air. It twitches. “I’m not,” he says. “I didn’t—the mud—I’m clean there.”

“Relatively. But I need that thing as clean as can be. You catch my drift?”

“Um. Yes. Yes, Steve, please. I’d like that.”

“Wasn’t asking permission, but thanks. A little encouragement never hurts.”

“I can encourage you. I can encourage the—” The wipe’s cool touch to his hole registers belatedly, and he startles with a sharp intake of breath, one leg kicking up. “God.”

“‘Encourage the God?’” Steve forces his leg back down with a steely grip on his calf.

“Sorry. Encourage the hell out of you. You cheer into my asshole, I cheer into yours.”

“Yeah, that’s not happening.”

“I’ll cheer into your something. _Oh._ Oh, fuck.” Wiping turns to prodding, Steve pushing the wipe inside him with one finger, and abruptly, it’s not cool anymore. The cloth absorbs the tight heat of his clenching insides and feeds it back to him. This is what it would feel like if Bucky were Steve’s daily winter weather hand-warmer, stuffed with fleece. And Bucky would have zero complaints.

“You like that? Gripping right onto me.” His thumb circles the rim of Bucky’s hole, and Bucky loosens for a second, before clamping tight around Steve’s covered finger again. “You like getting clean?”

“I do, Steve. It’s good. It’s—Fuck, it’s _hot_. I want to be clean so you can do. Anything. Anything you want.”

“Good. Almost done with you. Taking this out now.”

Bucky makes a complaining noise, but doesn’t tighten in protest when Steve pulls the wipe and finger out, taking that damp burst of heat with. A few more swipes over his opening and down his taint, and then Steve’s done with him, and steps away. Off to the side enough that out of the corner of his eye and through a messy curtain of hair, Bucky can see him shoving the wipe into his pocket and then putting a fist under his chin, other arm crossed over his chest.

Aiming for subtle, just a hint flirtatious, Bucky pulls his ass open wider. All that elicits from Steve is a quiet _hmm_. Bucky waits a few beats, but remains untouched. “Steve?”

“What? You expecting something?”

“I thought—I thought you were going to. Eat me out?”

“Your cunt can wait, Buck.” Steve comes around the side of the table and leans in, elbows on the green, face cupped in his hands, staring at Bucky. “Learn some patience; it’s good for you.”

“Yeah, you got a lotta that yourself?”

“I don’t have to. We work on my schedule. And right now I want to look at you. Can’t wait to.”

“There’s nothing good about looking at me.”

“False.” Steve pokes Bucky’s eyebrow. “How could you ever believe me when I tell you how ugly you are if I haven’t examined the evidence closely?”

“Can’t even see most of my face.” It’s not phrased as a request, but Steve obviously understands, sweeping away the hair that’s fallen in Bucky’s face, tucking it behind his ear. And Bucky turns his face more fully to the side and smiles. Swallows. “Please?” He jerks his head in a little gesture over his shoulder, indicating his ass, and when Steve follows the gesture, spreads his legs more.

Steve purses his lips and relents. Ruffles Bucky’s hair as he goes. Standing behind him, he tsks, and taps one finger on the back of Bucky’s left hand.

“You poor thing. Digging your fingers in so hard like that, you’re gonna bruise.” That’s news to Bucky, who’s been too absorbed in frustration to think much about his own body beyond what Steve might use it for. But when he examines the facts, yeah, he could stand to ease his grip, if he wants to avoid bruising, but that sounds unlike him.

Steve says, “Okay, here, here.” He trails his finger from Bucky’s tailbone to the cleft of his ass. Rubs up and down that path. Light friction and no sensation worth writing home about.

Bucky wiggles. “ _Please_. That’s not—”

“I’m _getting_ to it. Geeze, watch me get my mouth on that hole and have you still whining it’s not enough.”

“I won’t! I’ll be grateful. I promise, Steve, all right? Zero whining. Happy camper.”

“You think I care if you’re happy? As long as you’re not complaining. You’ll shut up and take it whether you like it or not.” A skinny, toothy rush like the yank of a zipper pull travels through Bucky’s stomach. Same with his dick, hard and hurting beneath him, pulsing wetness onto the towel and his skin.

“I promise. Thank you.”

Steve drops to his knees.

That sound stirs something Pavlovian and tense in Bucky’s gut. Because him being on his knees for Steve is perfectly casual, the proper way of things, but Steve only gets on his knees with specific intent to tear Bucky apart.

To tear him apart with his mouth, a paper shredder he feeds Bucky’s body through. So the end result’s a mess, a puzzle, something you can only piece back together if you knew exactly, backward and forward, what it looked like at the outset.

Bucky arches his back as much as he can manage with so little leverage, and the firm hand around his thigh and noise from the back of Steve’s throat are approving. At the first close-lipped kiss to his perineum, he gasps and squeezes his eyes shut like he’s standing on the sun about to be burned blind. Steve presses more kisses to his skin: closer to his balls, and at the inner bits of his ass cheeks, falling short of his hole. Frustratingly light, followed by dainty flicking licks, and Bucky’s not visibly writhing but it feels like something small and hard at the core of him is rattling violently, ready to explode.

“Steve,” he says, reedy, barely there, and Steve hums thoughtfully against his rim, the vibration so sudden and followed by an equally sudden wet lap from the flat of his tongue that Bucky’s hips jump. Steve hums close to him again, makes him jump again, and then hands are clamped around each of Bucky’s thighs, like that’ll hold him still. The jumping thrusts his dick forward on the towel, gentle texture rumbling through him, setting off an, “Oh.”

Steve bites him, high on the squishy inside of a thigh, sucks and nips at him, and Bucky’s hips rock side-to-side, a ship in a storm. More so, when Steve moves his hand from that thigh, the thigh he must be flooding with overlapping bruises, to snake beneath Bucky and grab his balls and tug backward. They’re rolled in Steve’s palm; ligaments stretch, and Steve’s still going at his thigh like he forgot Bucky even has an asshole, must be turning him violet, tricking himself into thinking Bucky’s a grape jolly rancher he can shrink down with enough tongue and determination, and all Bucky can do is, “Oh, oh, oh, fucking— _Steve_.” The hyperfocus on his thigh contrasts strikingly with his abandoned, dampened hole, which opens and closes, wanting, begging.

Steve lets up. Grips both of Bucky’s thighs firmly once more and says, “Kick me and regret it.”

“That—That an order?”

With Steve’s mouth ghosting along the bruising flesh, Bucky can feel his grin—and can feel his cheekbone, next to Bucky’s balls, moving with the words when he says, “If you want it to be.”

“Am I allowed to come if I don’t kick you?”

“Eventually. Now? Nope.”

“Okay. Okay, oh—” Steve’s hand has inched further inland on his thigh, so the fingertips grip where he’s bitten, the pain of it torpedoing up through Bucky. His ass clenches and his dick spurts, but he tries very hard to keep his hips still, to not rub off on the towel too much, to be good. And not to kick Steve either. 

Because sweet, merciful Steve remembers he’s got an asshole. Steve remembers with gusto.

Bucky says, “Oh hey, there,” and now it’s his turn to have the shitty memory, forgetting how words work. Sentence structure and all that’s stolen right from him by Steve’s tongue, generous with spit, moving flat and broad up from his perineum and over his hole, again and again, pausing sometimes to circle the rim, to flick at him fast right over the center. Steve’s fingers still force their way into those bruises, a harshness tamped down by the soft sweet heat of his persistent mouth.

“Eat me out, Steve, please, fuck, please? Steve. Eat my. Cunt, please.”

Steve pulls away. Ticked-off edge to his voice, he says, “What exactly do you think I’m doing right now?”

“I dunno! Sorry that I’m _stupid_ ! I’m too dumb to know, okay. Not all of us can answer that kind of. That kind of.” His words twist into keening as Steve laughs, whole face vibrating, and laps at his hole simultaneously. Bucky bites out the words, “ _Trivia_ night question,” and Steve switches to circling his hole with the tip of his tongue, warming him all over, trapping him in what feels like the midpoint of a yawn stretched forever. So he’s whimpering, but intelligible, he thinks, when he says, “Couldn’t be on your trivia team at all. Would do a godawful job.”

“Aw, Buck.” Steve nips at his untouched other inner thigh, and Bucky shrieks. Giggles at the shock. “I go to bar trivia, you better be on my team. Wouldn’t wanna miss the opportunity to see you embarrass yourself like that. When you can’t even name somethin’ simple. Like who discovered Uranus.” His tongue swirls and presses flat to Bucky’s hole, teasing him by pushing just inside, then pulling out.

Bucky laughs and says, “William Herschel, actually.”

Steve mutters, “You were supposed to say _me._ ”

“Oops. My bad. Had _no_ idea, it was _such_ a mature and clev—Fuck.”

Like he’s getting revenge, Steve works at him with renewed fervor. Purposefully loud, sloppy, loosening him up. Sucking at the flesh near Bucky’s hole so it might bruise too, sting and smart when he’s finally allowed to have a functional, closed human ass one day and his cheeks rub together. Bucky’s muscles melt into pools of hot wax he’d love to roll around in. His attempt to tilt his ass up further fails, hips instantly dropping back down like they’re weighted.

It’s the kind of feeling he could live inside. The kind of home people retire to late in life, somewhere sunny and secluded, a place that feels safe and worked-for. And permanently leaving the city isn’t even something he’s ever wanted much in his life, okay, but the concept of that, of it even ever being on his radar, is so much, so large. The tip of Steve’s tongue slips inside of him, solid and slimy and writhing, and Bucky shouts and groans, and if he lived inside this sunny, secluded feeling, he would be constantly on edge, about to come and held back from the brink by an arm over his chest, unable to fall, and he says, “Steve, fuck, Steve, Steve,” hips writhing, unable to stop himself from humping the table, from working himself so close. “Steve I can’t, I’ll—”

Steve kisses him right over his asshole and then stops. Pulls his face away. Releases Bucky’s thighs. That’s another shock, another jolt through him. He wants Steve’s hands, his mouth. He can’t _function_ like this, untouched.

Steve says, “Thanks for telling me,” and instead of wiping his mouth off on his sleeve, he wipes it in the crook of Bucky’s knee so Bucky giggle-gasps, prevented from kicking up by a strong grip around his ankle. “Now, I’m thinking—”

“Well.” Bucky blinks and swallows his brain back to reality. “I’m afraid then.”

“Shush. You said you need something up in you so you wouldn’t get distracted. So you don’t shatter and I gotta look at you through a kaleidoscope, that right?” He gets up off his knees.

“It wouldn’t—You’re misquoting me.” Bucky’s hole flutters, and he imagines it darting around the room and wringing its hands, confused about what happened, desperate to return to Steve’s mouth. “You wouldn’t hafta look at me through a kaleidoscope. I’d already be through the kaleidoscope.”

“Answer the question I’m actually asking, wise guy.”

“Yeah. Yeah I want something up in me. Your tongue was really good but. Your fingers, please? Or. If you packed anything?”

“Nah, see, I was thinking.” Steve sticks his hand in the table’s nearest pocket, and comes out holding a bright red ball. He places it in front of Bucky’s face. “What do you say?”

“Uh. What?”

“Could a little slut like you fit one of these inside him? I mean. All that time with my fist stuck up you must have been good for something.” He taps at Bucky’s rim, just short of really striking him, setting off sparks on Bucky’s skin, and a quick spasm of his hole. “Think it might have trained you to be able to take anything.”

“Steve, you know I can’t. That’s insane.” But he finds himself sizing it up anyway. Despite knowing it’s not like Steve just punches right up into him, spearing him on his fist, he finds himself thinking, well, the ball’s no bigger than one of Steve’s hands. And if Steve kept a couple careful fingers hooked around it, then Bucky’s insides wouldn’t suck it up.

A ball gag for his ass, held and displayed. Or maybe a clown nose; Steve could draw eyes on him, throw a rainbow wig on top. And slam a banana cream pie in that ass-clown’s face. Bucky erupts in giggles, so he can’t hear what Steve’s saying to him. The blow Steve delivers to the underside of his ass, that reverberates so the hand’s sensors pick it up where he’s holding himself open, does nothing to shut him up.

Steve says, “Hey, blockhead, you having a hysterical fit down there?”

“Oh, you bet,” Bucky wheezes. “I’m afflicted with hysteria something awful.” He clears his throat. “Quick, fetch the vibrator to cure me.” That cracks him up even more, so Steve sighs and clamps a hand over his mouth. Muffled by the palm, ruffling sounds like a Victorian hysteric’s long nightgown dragging along the floor push forth from Bucky while he vibrates with laughter instead of with the effects of an extremely medically necessary sex toy.

“Listen to what I’m trying to tell you, you useless piece of shit. You don’t need a vibrator. I’ve already got something right here to stick in you. Now, you gonna let me cure your hysteria with this or not?” The ball rolls away when he nudges it with his wrist, and he has to remove his hand from Bucky’s mouth to hustle it back into place.

Anyway, he did just ask a question harder than nodding for yes or shaking for no, and seems to recognize that, because he uses his hand to hold Bucky’s neck down instead of for holding Bucky’s now mostly subdued laughter in. He asks again, “Would you let me?”

“Yeah. I might.”

“So should I? Really?” Steve’s audibly holding back his own laughter.

“Yes. No. No, this isn’t—These ain’t ours. You can’t stick someone else’s pool balls up my ass.”

“Right, and that’s the only good reason. Nothing to do with not wanting to break this nice toy I spent so long making.”

“Making?”

“Yeah. You’re made just to my specifications, Buck.” A kiss to the skin behind his ear. A new wave of heat floods Bucky’s face. “Got my hands dirty building and modifying you until you were exactly the thing I wanted most.”

“Oh? Oh.” He takes a deep breath and shoves his face into the green like he can burrow right through before pulling himself up for air and saying, “Thanks, Steve.”

“You’re welcome. But _that’s_ why I’m not gonna stick a pool ball up your ass. Not worth the risk that you’ll be no good to me anymore. But you know what I can put in you without breaking your poor fragile insides?” 

“Most other things, I think.”

“That right? You got a pretty funny idea of what exists. A couch? A tree? My entire leg? I feel like those don’t go in there either.”

“What do you want from me? I’m stupid. I’m too stupid to know how many big things exist and how many small things. Come on.”

“That’s true. Sweet little idiot. Stupid little small thing. Okay, I’ll just tell you.” He whispers in Bucky’s ear like he’s plotting to overthrow another government agency, “I’m gonna stick the pool cue up your ass. How’s that?”

“Steve, you _can’t_.” He must whine louder than he means, because Steve startles, mouth leaving Bucky’s ear and hand leaving his neck to hover over the spot between his shoulder blades “Those ain’t ours.”

“So? I’ll sanitize it. I’m gonna sanitize this whole place, now it’s had the likes of you inside. That’s what I do with everything you touch.” He strokes down Bucky’s spine and Bucky shivers all over, feeling melodramatic, but he can’t help it. Steve leans over to talk in his ear again. “And I tell everyone else to do the same. Called your boss before your first day of work, and told her all about you, how any surface you come in contact with needs to be wiped down immediately. All my friends know. All your friends know.” He squeezes Bucky’s ass, making groan-inducing use of his nails. “Every shopkeeper of every store you’ve ever entered, since 1935.” 

“Steve, please. Please.”

“Please what, Buck? Fuck you with the cue? Don’t fuck you with the cue? Please don’t shove some nice hard wood up in you?”

“Neither, just. I’m saying please understand, Steve, you _can’t_! I told you! It’s impolite!”

“That the only reason I can’t? Or are you telling me you don’t want it? You don’t want this wood jammed right up your ass? I mean, you fucked up trying to hold it in your hands when I gave you the chance. You saying you don’t want help finding a workaround?”

“No, that’s not—” and he’s suddenly concerned that Steve will think he’s drawing a real boundary here, that Steve won’t understand the issue and so won’t follow through—“That’s. I want it. I do. Sweet of you to give me a second chance, it is.” He shakes his ass at Steve, and the cue whips him, shoving his hips forward, his dick against the beach towel combining with the sudden burn and thud to flicker his brain on and off and on like the lights of a haunted house so a soft, “Fucking my _God_ ,” oozes from his lips before he whines, “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m saying: Afterward it’s gonna be my problem that we defiled it _._ ”

A problem he doesn’t know how to solve, even as he wants, needs, is so stupid with needing.

“Oh, I get it now. You’re too brainless to know how this works.”

Bucky laughs shakily. “I mean, probably.”

“You see, Buck, it’s _my_ problem, all right? Not yours. I’ll take care of it. I’ll worry about it, okay? It’s my problem. You trust me on that?”

“’Course I do. You make everything your problem.”

Steve laughs, but says, “Right hand on the green, smart aleck. Palm up.”

He gets back half his dignity, moving his hand from his ass so it can spring half-shut. Steve grips the wrist tight to hold him still. Closed-eyed, Bucky gulps and savors the impact of the cue on his soft palm—he hasn’t had callouses in so long—three times in a row. “Thanks, Sister Steve,” he says as Steve’s turning his hand over to push the heated skin against the felt.

It’s a beast of a shame that Steve can’t hit his left palm hard enough to feel like anything without risking snapping the cue.

“Fuck off, dogbreath. Now, you gonna let me fuck you with this or am I gonna have to make up a new game? I can, you know.” That last part comes out like a threat, and curiosity about what a new game might entail tugs on Bucky’s sleeve, almost making him stick to his principles re: other people’s property, but he folds. He’s already got something he wants right in front of him. Or. Behind him.

“Okay, okay. Please. Fuck me and suffer the weight on your own soul.”

“All right. Good boy. Good answer.” Bucky pushes his face against the felt along with his hand. Gives it a kiss. “You think you deserve to be opened up some more?”

“No.”

“Of course you don’t. But I’m in the mood to fuck with you a little longer, and I don’t need to deserve things. I can have whatever I want, can’t I?”

“Of course. Always. Whenever. You’re allowed to mess with me whenever.”

Just behind his teeth, clamoring to get said aloud: a complaint about Steve being the one here who politely sexts Bucky watermarked photos in the morning instead of waking him up like a real entitled asshole. But that’s not fair; Steve’s rudely awoken him twice in the recent past for erotic purposes. Anyway, he doesn’t have it in him to backtalk anymore. To be anything but sweet and pliant. All he wants to do is walk the walk of letting Steve have whatever he wants. 

What Steve wants, in this moment, is to guide Bucky’s right hand into holding his ass open once more, dignity fully erased, and lightly trace Bucky’s rim with a fingertip. “That’s right,” Steve says. “You’re open for me ’round the clock.”

“Like a 7-Eleven.”

Steve laughs, and replaces the fingertip with his thumb dipping in and out. “Exactly. My very own filthy convenience slut. Got a ‘C’ in your window from the health inspector.”

“Of course. Too many flies in the donut case. And the hotdogs? Ancient. Make you vomit.”

As the thumb pushes farther in, moving in a circle, urging his walls apart, Bucky sighs. Steve’s mouth already wet him up and relaxed the furled-tight muscle at his entrance, but having something in him like this, even only a thumb, is a whole other matter, a relief, like the stretch of being fucked is his natural state. He’s a window that got painted shut and Steve’s prying him open.

So he says, “Thank you. Thank you. Fucking thanks, honey. God.”

“I haven’t given you what you want yet, y’know.” Another finger joins Steve’s thumb, the two pulling apart from each other, pushing together, slowly working him wider. Between them, the tip of Steve’s pointed tongue slips into his held-open hole, and Bucky whines at how it moves in him like a snake.

Voice strained, he says, “I want this too. It’s all good. Thank you for all of it. Fuck. I’m gonna—”

Steve’s breath is warm on his spit-wet skin and muscle. “You can come when the cue’s in you. I think it’s time for that now. You gonna ask nice?”

“Please. Please put the cue in me, Steve. Please fuck me. I need it.”

“I can see that. Just one second, Buck.” First, he dangles the cue in Bucky’s face, not close enough to misinterpret as an order to kiss it, and Bucky gazes at it with adoring eyes, at this gleaming extension of Steve’s hand about to fuck him good, until it disappears from view. Trails perpendicularly down his spine. While Steve makes tearing-open-lube-packet sounds, the cue rests atop the small of Bucky’s back, waiting for him.

Really, it’s pretty small, no bigger around at the tip than one of Steve’s fingers. If Steve flips it around and fucks him with the ornately painted shaft, that still only flares to two fingers, maybe three. Intellectually, Bucky knows that, but there’s the length of the thing, the potential for Steve to fuck the whole deal up into him like a spit roast. And there’s the weight that comes not from anything physical, but from the long-awaited fulfillment of a fantasy, the fetishizing process transforming the cue into a fetish in the way that means _magical talisman_ , his hunger for this moment sunk deep into the fibers of the wood and imbuing it with power.

The first time Steve fucked his ass, it was with the same loved and longed-for wooden spoon handle he used to fuck Bucky’s throat the first time. As it slid into him, slicked up, surrounded by his quivering muscles, Bucky thought that this must be how safes feel, when they’re cracked. When they swing open and let a thief in. And then they must think, _Oh holy shit I can’t believe I’m supposed to want the opposite of this._

He whispered, “Fuck, rob me,” mouth half-obscured by a pillow, and Steve scrunched up his face in confusion, but before Bucky could never-mind the words away or rustle up some kind of coherent explanation, that confused look cleared, replaced with something soft, and Steve said, “All right, Buck. I’ll take everything you’ve got.”

For a moment, Steve steps away, taking the cue from Bucky’s back. Then, without warning, nails drag down the back of his thigh, burning him up, and Bucky moans and digs his own nails into his ass, struggling not to kick. Steve bites him there, over the scratch marks, pulling screams from Bucky’s throat. Teeth clamping harder, Steve pushes the leather cue tip against his hole, solid and smooth, lube-slicked, and it goes in easy as anything, heralded by a gasp that breaks through the screams.

“ _Fuck_ , Steve. Christ, thank—Thank you.” The cue flares a bare amount wider, but not much. No match for the amount Steve already worked him open. “Fuck _fuck_ holy fucking shit,” Bucky says as the cue angles just right and finds his prostate. He says, “Christ.”

Steve says, “Yeah, _Christ._ I agree,” and pinches the heel of Bucky’s palm bitingly so Bucky’s ass clenches beneath his scrambling fingers. “I’d knock your teeth out shoving that ball in there to shut you the fuck up if I didn’t go to all the trouble pouring calcium in your ungrateful fuckhole last night.” He bites the meat of Bucky’s ass, low down, away from his pinched hand, and amends, “Your upper fuckhole. The bottom one’s a lot better at being polite.”

Bucky squirms, the cue shifting in him, rubbing at his walls, and his voice is tight, high, when he says, “I’m sorry, Steve. I’ll do better. I’ll be quiet.”

“Yeah, sing me a new one, Buck. You being quiet right now?”

Bucky shakes his head.

“Hey. Answer me, dummy. Are you being quiet?” A sharp jerk to a bit of hair at Bucky’s nape stings his scalp and pulls his forehead off the table before he drops back down with a small _thunk_.

“Fuck! No.” 

“That’s right. And it’s hard to believe you’ll start any time soon. I do the littlest thing to you, and you start caterwauling like I’m ripping your nails out.”

“Declawing me, you mean.”

“Aw, cute. I didn’t think you knew a word that big.”

“But I know ‘caterwauling?’”

“I don’t give a shit if you can understand me.” He’s not thrusting hard, but he is relentless, setting a steady rhythm, pressing the leather tip to Bucky’s prostate in short and sharp movements. It’s like he’s laid Bucky down on the beach, where the sand’s smooth and wet as a dolphin, and he’s leaving him there to be carried away by rising tides. Something too powerful to argue with is growing, preparing to claim him. “You talk to a little animal ’cause it’s there. Not ’cause it can carry on a conversation.”

Bucky says, “Oh. Yeah, oh—I. Well, I could—” He howls at Steve’s fingernails pinching the inner flesh of his ass cheek. Pinching and tugging and lighting him up while that euphoric warmth builds in waves.

“No. You couldn’t.” It doesn’t matter if Steve knows what he was trying to say, which was that he could learn to carry on a conversation, if that’s what Steve wanted. Any “you couldn’t” from Steve is good right now. “You’d fuck it up completely.”

“I would. You’re right. You’re so—I. Yeah.” His mouth gets stuck open wide, for something to leave or something to enter; he doesn’t know which.

Steve laughs. “Yeah.” 

After the first scrape of his teeth on the green, Bucky comes to his senses enough to wrap his lips around his teeth, to protect the table, and his lips and the tip of his nose might be rubbed red on the felt with how he’s rocking rapidly. Massaging his dick with the beach towel on one side and his own soft stomach on the other, the height of luxury. Then Steve’s _biting_ him where he pinched, the sensitive skin so close to where he’s fucking him on the end of the cue, shoving at him like he’s a ball, a magic eight ball, something you talk to because it’s there and not because it can carry on a conversation.

It _can’t_ carry on a conversation, only spit back programmed answers but you talk to it and shake it anyway, and the cue twists inside him, rubs more gently at his prostate while Steve bites and sucks at him and Bucky squeezes his own ass like it’s a stress ball and his breath gets put on pause.

Gets out of the way for the thing that crawls up from his gut, out his throat, out his fucking _eyes_ , the great loud warm force of _energy_ , and his dick pulses, shoots off, smearing wet all over his torso, and his muscles all slump as one.

Steve’s not biting him. Steve’s petting down his back.

Eventually, Bucky says, “Mm. Nice.”

Steve says, “You with me?”

“So with you. Where you going? I’m there.”

“I want you to turn over for me.”

“Like this?” That’ll really make the cue a spit roast. His body awkwardly spinning, speared on its length, and still burning up despite his softening cock. He rolls his shoulders and tenses his abs, trying to get a feel for how much force he’d need to flip himself without the use of his hands. But he’s tired, uncoordinated, will fuck up and kick Steve in the kidneys for all he knows. “Need my hands, stupid,” he says.

“Hey.” A smack to the back of his thigh makes him tighten around the cue. “Be nice. And that’s okay. Do what you gotta. Don’t worry. I won’t let this slip outta you.”

“Thank you.”

Hands and elbows on the table, this should be easy. But he feels like a baby bird hatching from an egg. Discovering the existence of every single one of his bones for the first time. Steve is patient, quiet, as Bucky fumbles one knee up onto the table’s edge and becomes lopsided. New, strained pain crawls up the other leg’s mid-line, and he tests, in small rocks forward, whether it would be best to pull that knee up too, but his thigh’s seeming more like a day-old pastry than anything with useful muscles inside, so he says, “Guess this is. Okay, here I go,” and shakily drags himself forward until that leg’s sticking straight out instead of dangling. The cue stays inside him through that, hardly shifting at all, and it’s still there when he twists at the waist and raises his bent leg into the air, swinging it dramatically over until he’s on his back, one knee pulled to his chest and the other sprawled out to the side.

Except. No, it’s fucking not still there. Steve’s hand isn’t holding the cue; it’s disappearing into Bucky’s body. At least, two fingers on it are, and Bucky stares at the protruding veins on the back of Steve’s hand, at the creased skin of his bent wrist, at his sharp knuckles, for much longer than he should need to, trying to process what the hell kind of vanishing act the cue just pulled, before it dawns on him.

“Hey.” He frowns at Steve. “You tricked me.”

“Yep.” And Bucky hears him kick the cue where it’s abandoned on the floor. “Just me in here! Has been all along. Really comes in handy that you’re so gullible. I mean.” He pumps his fingers in and out of Bucky’s ass, the suddenness causing his walls to contract, for him to breathe hard, oversensitive from coming, and presses the thumb of his free hand against Bucky’s hip flexor. “Y’think I’d defile someone else’s property like that when I’ve got my own property right here I can defile plenty?”

“You ain’t exactly known for your moderation. Steve, you. Fuck.” He laughs, drags a hand down on his face. “The whole fucking time?” 

“Of course. I don’t want the cabin’s owner leaving you a bad review. You know who gets to leave you bad reviews?”

“ _My_ owner?”

“Yep. That’s right. But I’m thinking about leaving you a _lukewarm_ review after this. You did really okay for me there.”

“Oh.” And then: “ _Oh_ ,” at the slow tug of Steve’s fingers leaving his ass, even as his hole hungrily tries to hang onto them. Smirking, Steve brings the fingers up next to his own face like a Cub Scout salute. “What the _fuck_ is that?” Bucky says, pointing to the bit of black leather covering the middle fingertip, and Steve shrugs.

“Cut the finger off a glove. You know, I wasn’t actually sure that would work? I underestimated how stupid you can get.”

“Well! I was. Distracted. I can tell the difference between your fingers and the cue _now_.”

“Oh, can you?” Steve picks up the cue and holds it next to his fingers. “Which is which, then, genius?”

Bucky exaggerates a frown. “Aw, fuck. I can’t tell. Guess I lied.” 

“Lying’s _very_ bad. Shame on you.”

“You just—You fucking.” Bucky giggles weakly, and says in his best impersonation of Steve’s stage voice, “‘Lying’s bad, boys and girls! Lying’s a _sin._ ’ After you _trick_ me, cruelly, into thinking I’m getting a dream come true on the end of a pool cue, getting hit up inside me like I’m a goddamn ball, _having_ a ball—”

“Didn’t you?”

“Well. Yeah. I did.” He flourishes his hands at his dick, at the come that splattered on his skin instead of on the towel. At his own flushed face and his mussed hair. “Why do you _think_ I’m mocking the idea of lying being bad? It’s very fucking great, obviously.”

“It’s only bad when you do it. Me?” One hand at each end, Steve seesaws the cue in the air. “I only lie for the greater good. You had a dream come true, and this thing’s still unsullied.”

“It is, yeah. So it’s no one’s problem.”

“No, it’s still my problem. Everything’s my problem. You’re the most my problem of all. No matter how many times I solve you, you keep cropping up again.”

“I mean. Could’ve bought her a new cue. Exact copy even, we looked carefully enough. Not a very hard problem to solve, I guess.”

“You’re already paying this woman a million dollars for us to stay here. We’re not buying her a new cue.”

“Oh, how’d you figure out it was a million?”

“Peeked at your bank statements.”

“Mm. Sure. You’re an excellent detective.” He sits up enough to give Steve a lazy salute, then slumps down.

Steve leans over him, hands braced on either side of his rib cage, affection in his eyes, too far away to kiss, which is too bad, and says, “You know how bad I want to climb up there on top of you and take you apart?”

“I’m already apart, darling. I’m in pieces. Flung to the four corners of the tabletop.”

“I can crumble those pieces up smaller.” Plain and straightforward as a grocery list, he says, “I wanna tie you down to the table and lie all the way on top of you. Then I wanna blow you until you come a second time, while you squirm around under me with my knees pinning down your face.”

“Then what’s the hold-up?”

“Really?” He knocks on the green. “The hold-up is we weigh about a ton combined and I’m not tryna take the pool table apart. Just you.”

“You like taking _everything_ apart.”

“Not when it would mean getting banned from coming back and beating you up in the fresh air again, I don’t.”

Bucky grins. “You wanna do this again? Another million dollars? Only—The kidnapping won’t surprise me twice.”

“Says you.” He nips at Bucky’s clavicle. “I’ll think of something to keep the romance alive. Promise.”

“I believe you. Holy fuck do I believe if anyone can spend eternity surprising me, you’ve got it all handled.”

Steve kisses his mouth. “Aw. That’s sweet, Buck.” When Bucky smiles at him, eyes squinty, he adds in a softer voice, “I’ll do what I can to not let you down.”

Bucky grazes his cheek with metal knuckles, and Steve turns into the touch, and kisses him exactly where he’d wear a wedding ring. Thinking of it like that is ridiculous, over-the-top sentimental, but Steve’s a details guy. There’s a strong chance he did kiss Bucky’s finger _there_ with that same thought in mind. So Bucky says, “Love you. Lie down with me? Not on the table, but.”

“Yeah, all right. Come on. Up and at ‘em.” He tugs on Bucky’s wrist, and Bucky’s wobbly-legged as a very old chair when he stands, slumping forward for Steve to take his weight. Steve does take it, laughing, wrapping his arms around Bucky, whose face is smushed into Steve’s shoulder. “I didn’t fuck you so bad you can’t walk to the couch yourself, your highness.”

“No. You fucked me that _good_.”

“Oh, in that case.” Steve pushes him away a little, with a steadying hand around his bicep. As a safety net, in case he really can’t walk and his knees buckle instantly, Bucky guesses. But his knees stay unbuckled. “Nope. March. I believe in you here.”

“What happens if I don’t?”

“Then I tie somethin’ around your neck and drag you over there, but I’m kinda tired, so. Be good. And go. Lie down.” He picks up the abandoned cue and whacks Bucky across the ass with it. Bucky jumps, squeaks. Steve’s voice is gentle when he taps the cue on the side of Bucky’s head and says, “I’ll be there as soon as I’ve checked on security, all right?”

Bucky nods. “Yeah. Thank you.” Because he has got enough energy to swagger over to the couch and collapse face-down on its overstuffed cushions, but not to do a thorough job of sealing the place up. And worrying over whether he’d missed anything would suck even more energy from him, until he was a jittery yet barely sentient lump in Steve’s arms.

But Steve knows what he’s doing. Has gotten better and better over the years with this kind of thing, and has practiced plenty with the high-tech laser barrier system they keep around for emergencies or particularly weak spots like the fire escape window. The faint clicks and beeps and Steve’s footsteps are reassuring.

The cabin becomes a fortress. Steve fetches the metal water bottle from the fridge and comes to lie down with him, each of them an extra bit of safety for the other.

  


-

  


Bucky whispers, “There’s a fireplace.”

They’ve been spooning and staring into the empty fireplace for who the fuck knows how long at this point.

Behind him, Steve whispers back, “Yeah, I can see it.” A sun-bleached elk skull hangs high above the mantle.

Still whispering: “There’s firewood too. We don’t even have to chop it ourselves.”

At a normal volume, Steve says, “Sure. But someone does gotta put it in there.” They continue cuddling quietly for a while. Then Steve pokes Bucky’s cheek. He repeats, “Someone’s gotta put in there.”

Bucky grunts. “I’m the one who just got fucked within an inch of his life.”

“I’m the one who just fucked you within an inch of your life. And handled security. That’s legitimate manual labor.”

“Mmm.” Bucky sighs. Steve has a point. “Rock paper scissors for it?”

“I’ve never seen you win rock paper scissors, Buck. You basically just forfeit.”

“I can win rock paper scissors! And I haven’t exactly got on any clothes that might have coins in the pockets. And _someone_ doesn’t carry change.” Steve doesn’t like the noise of coins jingling in his pockets. It makes him feel looked-at, in a pointless kind of way. “Now, come on. Come at me.”

He brings his left fist up to hover in the air. Steve lifts the hand on Bucky’s hip in a matching fist. “All right,” he says. “Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.”

His rock crushes Bucky’s scissors, and Bucky groans. “It’s because your hands move faster than this thing, right? My scissors were telegraphed? I’m being discriminated against for having antique Soviet robot parts here.”

“Yeah? Go call a lawyer about it.” He shoves ineffectually at Bucky’s antique non-Soviet non-robot shoulder. “After you get our fire started.”

“Give me a minute.”

“All right. One. Two. Three. Four—”

“You serious? I meant a quiet minute, Steve, with my thoughts.”

“Ten. Eleven. Twelve. Thirtee—“

“Okay, okay shaddup, here I go, okay?” He very elegantly rolls off of the couch and onto the rug. Huffing, he drags himself toward the fireplace with his elbows. The rest of him wriggles behind him. Risking carpet burn. “Climbing. Fucking. Mount Everest. For you here.”

Steve says, “Drama queen,” and Bucky twists around to look at him, pouting.

“I’m probably going to die down here, all alone, on a carpet in the middle of the wilderness. Die, for real this time, and my common-law husband is just lying there and _watching_ like I’m some kind of _television entertainment._ ”

“This is you _not_ trying to entertain me?” Bucky sticks out his tongue. Steve copies him. “If you wanna go back to dragging yourself, I wouldn’t mind. It was an entertaining view.”

“Oh, I bet.” But he crawls the rest of the way with some sense of civility instead. A disappointed hum comes from Steve’s direction.

The last time he started a fire, he had someone else’s blood in his hair. Under his fingernails. A USB drive zipped into a hidden inner pocket in his pants. He’d just thrown up, blue Gatorade and white bile. But it’s not a bad memory. And when he’d gotten enough distance to sit and watch, it looked like a time-lapse video of a blooming rose.

But a fireplace—Well, his family’s home had a fireplace. These days, it’s probably just decorative, untouched by the NYU students and faculty.

The cabin owner provided everything, in curly wire baskets painted to look like they’re rusting. Muscle memory lights the fire, opens the flume and arranges the kindling and logs, shreds the front page of the _Times_ from three years ago—How fucking long do these people hoard their newspapers?—and when he looks over his shoulder, Steve is staring at him, smiling goofily, not trying to hide it.

Bucky turns up one corner of his mouth. He says, “Hey, you got matches?” There’s a long black plastic lighter, but he’d rather do this right, and Steve might not carry coins anymore, but he’ll always be a reliable source of potential arson. Steve slips a matchbook from his pocket and tosses it over. “Never changed a day in your life.”

“Only the small stuff. Light the fucking fire; I’m cold.”

“You’re not cold.”

“I’m colder than when you were up here.”

“Oh, in that case.” He strikes the match and lights the fire, and crawls back to Steve with the burnt match between his lips, fingers of his left hand folded in delicately over the matchbook. He can already hear the fire crackling.

He kneels, tipping his chin up. Offering the match to Steve, who takes it from him with his own teeth, coincidentally kissing Bucky in the process. Around the match, Steve grins, and he pats the couch. Gets out, garbled, “Furniture privileges. Come on, dummy.”

Climbing up, Bucky says, “Gee golly, really? Furniture privileges of my very own?”

“No. You have to share them. With Horace. From Craigslist.” His hand comes to rest on Bucky’s stomach. Then lower, stroking in small motions over the crinkly hair. Ignoring Bucky’s limp dick.

Through a yawn, Bucky says, “I’ll fight him. He can’t take me.” And as Steve’s yawn expands the chest at his back, and spreads Steve’s fingers further apart so they hold more of Bucky in place, he nods toward the fire and adds, “Someone’s gonna need to extinguish it eventually.”

Steve holds up the water bottle. Knocks it against Bucky’s cheekbone. Still freezing from waiting at the back of the fridge. “What do you think this is for?”

“Aw. My fella’s so smart. Thinks of everything. I was just gonna suggest we throw you on there to snuff it out.”

Steve laughs. “I know it’s unfair that I have both the brains and the beauty, but, well. You’re soft and warm. Kind of funny to talk to. That’s not bad.”

“You flatter me excessively.”

“I know, sweetheart.” He kisses the top of Bucky’s head.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Steve purposefully tricks Bucky into thinking that Steve's going to spray him with water at high pressure, knowing that high water pressure is something Bucky finds triggering. It's clarified in a flashback that he asked previously whether that would be an okay thing for him to do and got an all-clear from Bucky, and after doing it he does immediately go to Bucky and verify that he's fine. Bucky is, in fact, fine. 
> 
>  
> 
> 2\. Bucky establishes that he wants to be fucked with a particular object, but is also stressed out by the concept because it's going to be a problem afterward. Steve tells him that it doesn't have to be Bucky's problem, that Steve will worry about it for him, and Bucky agrees, under those conditions, to let Steve fuck him with the object. At this point, Steve has already been fucking Bucky with his fingers, and just continues to do so while lying and telling him that he's switching to fucking him with the object, successfully tricking him. When Steve reveals the truth to Bucky soon after, Bucky is initially mildly annoyed that he was tricked, but is also unambiguously comfortable/happy with Steve's choice to lie to him/doesn't feel like his trust was abused.


	4. aboard the steamship amazon

The pool table, when it appeared nonchalantly in the Airbnb photos Bucky clicked through before scheduling their reservation, made his breath catch and his face heat and moved this place to the top of the list. He was compelled, for days afterward, to seek the texture of green felt with the same furtive energy he might have employed tracking down the perfect book before the internet sucked some of the fun out of that chase.

He buzzed a square inch of hair at the back of his neck, under the thick layers, so he could stroke the short fuzz; he tucked his fingers into his mouth, petting the inside of his cheek, and that was close, but too wet; he bought a pad of card-stock embossed to mimic felt, and gifted it to Steve when he was done worshiping it with his fingertips, and then propped his head up on his fist and sighed dreamily, watching Steve set the pad aside with care before resuming stirring the pasta on the stove, fingers wrapped around the wooden spoon handle a little different than they’d wrap around a cue.

But the table didn’t _decide_ things for him; the bed did. Steve gets it the moment they walk into the bedroom. Even bleary-eyed from half-dozing on the couch for hours (Bucky’d insisted he eat before passing back out, and stuffed two sandwiches into Steve’s mouth, muffling token protests). Steve says, “Oh,” and looks at Bucky with his mouth hanging open shapelessly, his brows scrunched. It’s a happy look.

Bucky says, “Yeah, see, look.” The mattress, queen-sized at least and tucked up tight in a creamsicle-striped duvet, rests on top of an enormous, solid slab of wood instead of a more conventional bed frame. All Bucky has to do is pick up the foot of the mattress and drag it to rotate ninety degrees, and there you go. They’ve both got beds: orange and white memory foam alongside an empty expanse of wood, just like a table, just the right size for Bucky’s body to curl up. “Ta-da.”

Almost absently, Steve echoes, “Ta-fucking-da.” His eyes jump around between the wood and the mattress and Bucky. Then he puts his knees on the mattress and crawls up its length, and grabs one of the four white pillows. The way he sets it down on Bucky’s side of the bed, you’d think he was slamming down a full briefcase of money at a race track ticket window. That he mortgaged his whole house and five other people’s houses too to bet on some horse named Bucky Barnes Sleeping Comfortably Next to Him at Night.

He looks at Bucky with that level of aggressive certainty, and Bucky laughs and says, “Thanks. A whole one pillow.”

“Sure, mouth off some more and see how many pillows I give you.”

“All of 'em?”

“Three.” A pillow flies straight at Bucky’s face. He lifts his arms to trap it in a smothering hug. Effectively blindfolded, breathing in citrusy detergent smell, he makes his way to the bed and collapses on top of Steve.

When Steve tries to pull the pillow away, Bucky fights him for it. Tightens his grip and earns a growl. He says, “It’s _mine_. You gave it to me.”

“Yeah, well, _you’re_ mine. _You_ gave you to me.”

Bucky says, “Shhh,” into the pillow and squirms away. But Steve grabs him around the middle and pulls him in close, arranging them so Bucky’s back is flat to Steve’s chest. The next tug to the pillow is light, a request. Bucky lowers it to beneath his chin. Steve kisses his cheek.

Steve says, low and teasing, “I take it back. I liked you better when that grotesque mug was obscured.”

“Hmm. So cover me up again. Smother me with it? That’s fun.”

“Maybe later. Right now—”

Steve sits up, and he’s already got bedhead. This time, Bucky lets him steal the pillow. In return, Steve smacks it against Bucky’s chest. Gestures for him to sit up. Then he throws another pillow into Bucky’s empty arms. “Here.”

“What, this one got my name on it?”

“No. You’re gonna fight me.”

“I’m gonna pillow fight you?”

“Yeah, you heard me.” His smile’s crooked. “Come on, get it up.” He wallops Bucky over the head. It’s like getting beat up by a marshmallow. Sticky, even, if they fight long enough to work up a sweat. And that’s what Bucky wants badly, sticky and soft, even though he just recently bathed

So he says, “Yeah, I’ll fucking get it up,” and slams his pillow into Steve’s face before launching himself at him, yelling, and Steve’s pillow bats him away so he rolls onto the wood slab, banging his elbow, and then it’s an all-out brawl.

 

-

 

In the dark, Bucky wakes to find Steve’s migrated to the table, curled in a ball at his side, one leg thrown over both of Bucky’s, fist clutching Bucky’s shirt, and Bucky drapes his arm over his waist in return, clutching thin fabric in his fist too, and tucks Steve’s head beneath his chin, and closes his eyes.

In the kitchen, much later, they manage to make blueberry pancakes and only burn a few while distracted by other, more pressing matters like Bucky's ability to balance things on his head.

In the sunlight, sitting on the porch steps and taking in the scenery in a way they never got around to doing the day before, Steve says, “Knife.” He holds out his hand.

“What’s it for?” Bucky digs a knife out of his jeans pocket and gives it over.

“Remember what I said?”

“That’s the vaguest fucking question, Steve.”

“I’m gonna put you in a tree and beat you like a piñata. With a—?”

“A stick.”

“That’s right. Knife. I’m doing this right.”

“You spending your free time googling how to cut a switch?”

“Uh, yeah.” Steve’s studying the knife. A stranger’s initials are engraved on the crimson handle, same as most of the knives Bucky’s rescued from the river. “What do you do with your free time?”

“Nurse injured baby squirrels back to good health. Plot the downfall of capitalism. Window shop for new sweaters.”

“See? You have all the other important shit handled. That leaves me plenty of time on my hands to plan how to reward you.”

“For what exactly?”

“Singlehandedly salvaging humanity, Buck. What d’ya think?”

“Oh. Well.” Blood rushes to his face, and he looks down and to the side.

But Steve ducks into his space to stare up at his and frame his face with his hands. The knife’s tucked into one of his palms, a threatening lump. He says, “Aw. Embarrassed already? I haven’t even taken your clothes off, baby.” An absent, unbalanced feeling comes to life in Bucky’s gut when he takes the hand with the knife away. But then the blade clicks out and presses flat to his skin, point ending at his cheekbone, and Bucky’s breath catches. Steve asks. “Would that be less embarrassing, even? Having all of you out for me to look at while I cut your switch?”

Bucky pokes his tongue into his cheek to feel resistance from the blade. “Not less. Different.”

“Easier?”

“Sure. Yes. Yeah, Steve.”

“All right.”

He grabs the front of Bucky’s shirt, then raises his eyebrows at his own hand and muses, “I could rip it off you, actually. With my hands. Sew it up later. You wanna try that?”

“Rip. Not cut?”

“You want me to dull this knife? It’s rip or take it off normal.”

“You’d—” He swallows. Stares at Steve’s hand, which is positioned over his thudding heart. Christ, his clothes will be in tatters. How Steve’s must have been, right after they grew him big like one of those newfangled foamy animal toys that soak up water.

Bucky actually bought a Captain America one of those a year ago, and left it in the bath to grow, as a joke. They both said it was kind of dumb, how it already looked like Captain America when it was small, instead of using some color-changing technology to start him off in drab civilian wear. Privately, Bucky thought that of course it was exactly the same small and big.

He says, “I think. No, please. Another time. Please just take ‘em off me normal, please.” This shirt has _I’ll wreck your hole_ embroidered beneath the care and handling tag. _Slime blob_ is tucked away inside the sweatpants’ right ankle cuff. After Steve stitches them up, they might be wearable, but not fit for public wear by his usual standards. He couldn’t, then, go to the library with the talisman of _I’ll wreck your hole_ pressed to his skin.

“Since you asked so nice. Make it easy for me.”

“Yes, Steve.” He raises his arms above his head for the shirt to come off in one pull. Waits quietly for Steve to untie his sneakers, and lifts each foot for him to take those and the socks off. Steps out of his sweatpants and briefs.

Closing the door after flinging Bucky’s mess of clothes inside, Steve says, “Just need to find a good tree. Come on.” He strides toward the woods, and Bucky follows.

“For the stick or for putting me in?”

“Uh. Both, I guess.”

“I already found one for putting me in.”

Steve looks at him over his shoulder. “What? Google street view? Hire a P.I.?”

“No. While you were conked out on the couch. I went looking.” He draped an afghan over Steve after disentangling himself, and Steve instantly burrowed inside it so only his sleep-angry eyebrows and hair poked out. When he signed the note he was leaving on the counter, Bucky dotted the “y” in his signature with a heart.

In pajamas and boots, he stood at the forest’s mouth, gazing at the still-bright sky, and experienced himself as small.

The door closing behind him, when he returned, was what woke Steve up, snapping him out of his Godzilla-roar snoring.

He can hear Steve’s smile in the words, “That was real proactive of you, Buck. Presumptuous even.”

“You already promised to put me in it! And I was just.” The gnawing urge to stuff his hands in pockets that don’t exist. “Enjoying nature too.”

“Yeah, I know. I’m fucking with you. Your effort’s appreciated.” He stops and gestures for Bucky to walk side-by-side with him. His fingers circle Bucky’s wrist. “Good for hitting you too?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t think so? Mostly thick branches. Sturdy. That’s why.”

“Nearby?”

“Ish. And should be near somethin’ you can use for me.”

“All right. You lead the way, then.”

“Yeah?” A 3D model of the woods crops up in his head, and he plunks the little 3D models of their bodies down at its edge. He rotates their real bodies so they’re heading for the good tree practically as the crow flies. The perfect tree, tree of dreams. He hugged it when he found it. Kissed the jagged bark. He leads, and Steve trails behind, loosely holding his wrist.

“Sure. I mean, say I walk a dog. I’d let him go in front of me too. He’d get to feel real independent. But I’m still holding the leash.” He shakes Bucky’s arm where he’s holding him. Indirectly shakes Bucky’s stomach too. He’s newly aware of his nudity, out here in the open. How much of him is exposed, and how much he’s exposed _to._ There are too many different animal and insect noises broadcasting around them at once for him to believe he can identify them all.

“Oh. Yeah.” Giddy laughter flows through him at the way Steve’s hold on his arm-leash intensifies. “You are.”

“I know that.”

The first rock that digs into his instep, once they’re in the woods, he yelps and jumps and Steve keeps holding his wrist but squares his shoulders and raises a fist. Bends his knees deep and ready. Eyes darting, he drops his voice. “What? What is it?”

“It’s—No, stand _down,_ Hercules _._ Nothing.” He drags a hand over his face. “I stepped on a pebble. We’re fine.”

“Oh.” Steve steps close and kisses his left shoulder, then shoves at him. “Dumbass. Look where you’re walking.”

“Yeah, well, I will _now_.” Very carefully, he dodges every rock and twig. Steve laughs under his breath and crunches right over them with no consequences.

They’re almost at the tree, but Steve tugs on his wrist and Bucky halts. “Heel, boy. Or—whichever word it is. It’s ‘heel.’”

“Yeah, it’s ‘heel’.”

“I didn’t ask.” He lets go and jerks his chin at a tall birch tree to their right. Its spindly limbs flail everywhere. “This’ll just take a moment. Wait here.”

“You got it.” He licks his lips, breath bated, caught on a hook and stretched thin.

Confident as someone who makes sex toys out of nature every weekend, Steve grabs hold of a branch. About the width of a tube of lipstick most of the way through but narrower at the tip, it comes free with one clean slice of the knife. Bucky winces, silently apologizing to the tree. Steve smirks at him and waves the stick. Bucky waves, and watches Steve poke his tongue through his teeth and neatly strip the thing of buds and leaves.

He comes back with it hanging by his side like a jockey’s riding crop and says, “Okay. Sturdy tree. Now.”

The implicit threat of the switch replaces the hand around his wrist as a leash. He asks, “Not taking the bark off? That’s a thing, right?”

“It’s a thing. But I don’t want to, no. Like it better this way.”

“What, you’ve experimented?

“Maybe.” Steve’s words are suddenly fish-slippery. Evasive. “A while ago. A little bit.”

And Bucky’s suspicious but not totally sure. “ _How_ ‘A while ago.’”

“A while a while ago, all right?”

“Oh my god. Steve.” He stops and swivels to stare at Steve, who’s going red. Like he’s lit up by a sunset. “Does ‘a while a while ago’ mean decades ago? Did you fucking—in the fucking _war_ , sneak away and cut down a tree branch—”

“Maybe, yeah, so what if—”

“And what, hit your hand with it to see how it felt to—”

“My palm and my thigh, okay. It doesn’t _matter_. Just in case. We ever got the chance—”

“Fuck, I love you. You fucking freak.” He kisses Steve’s mouth, and Steve softens. Bucky steps back and says, “I’m happy you’re finally getting the chance to put your research to good use.”

“Yeah. I’m happy too. But stop stalling.” He shoves Bucky, who almost trips over a giant rock. In steadying himself, he steps on a completely different rock.

“Ow!”

“Sturdy tree. Now. Unless you want me to beat you right here.”

“I’m going. I am. Fuck, I can’t wait.”

The tree’s at the far border of the path, where there’s plenty of grass and not too many rocks to worry about. A big gnarled oak, its shed most of its lower leaves, and held steady when he climbed it yesterday, leaping from branch to branch until he reached the top. Up there, his weight did make it sway, but that was fine. Steve sizes it up and nods.

Bucky watches Steve’s hands like they might grow ropes to bind him with. Or vines, or duct tape, or pulleys and gears. Plastic wrap, even, mummifying him and the branch together, but there’s nothing. “How do you want me?”

“In the tree, dummy. You never climbed a tree before?”

“Never climbed a tree for this purpose, no.” He strokes the rough trunk. “Which is a crying shame. By the way. And I don’t often say either of those words in a negative light.”

Steve huffs. “I gotta do all the thinking around here, huh?”

“We _knew_ that.”

“Yeah. You got me.” Abandoning the knife and stick in the grass, Steve comes to him. Leans a shoulder on the trunk and, casual as tossing litter in the trash, wraps a fist around Bucky’s loose hair and yanks. Baring his throat. And he boxes Bucky’s ear. “Nothing useful’s ever come out of this head but a lotta spit. I know. So I’ll be real nice. And I’ll teach you the right way to climb a tree when you want me to hurt you.”

The hair-pulling eases up so Steve can stroke down Bucky’s chest. Hand firm and flat, between his pecs, stopping at his stomach, where it presses in. This is how Bucky always imagined a girdle feeling. A second skin so secure it’s scary. What if Steve were somehow always holding him tight like this, beneath his clothes, wherever he went?

He looks at Steve through lowered lids, head tilted back, and licks his lips. “Thanks, Steve.”

“You’re welcome. Now, follow my lead.”

When Bucky says, “That’s what I’ve _been_ doing,” Steve’s already striding toward a low-hanging branch, reaching for it, but he spins around like an amusement park tea cup and the back of his hand collides with Bucky’s cheek loud enough a that a bird flees the tree. A single leaf falls in its wake.

Face burning, Bucky opens his mouth easily for the thumb Steve presses to his lips and sucks apologetically.

Steve says, “I don’t know, Bucky. Seems to me like you’ve _been_ getting smart with me.” The thumb fish-hooks into Bucky’s cheek and reels his face in close to Steve’s. That concentrated sharpness and stretch is enough to get him tearing up.

Empty mouth. A wet thumb smoothing over his eyebrow. “Sorry, Steve.”

“Hmm.” He pats Bucky’s cheek. “If you’re sorry, then do as I say and do as I _do,_ without any lip. Or I’ll bite your fuckin’ face off before I put you in a tree and hit you with a stick. We clear?”

“Clear…adjacent. Translucent? Sorry, Steve, I’m not talking back, I promise, but—”

“What?” A worry line appears between Steve’s eyebrows.

“I’m okay. Just, a genuine question: ‘do as you do’ mean I oughta slap myself and pull my own hair?”

Steve’s mouth twitches. “Now that would be a nice apology. It’s not what I meant. But you’re right. I should have. Let’s see it.” He crosses his arms.

Transforming himself into a pulp cover, Bucky poses like his left hand’s a UFO hovering in the distant sky and he’s the damsel who caught its eye and can prepare to be abducted in ten, nine—

“Careful,” Steve says. “You a hundred percent sure you can do it safely with that one? You injure yourself, you won’t like what I do.”

“What’ll you do?” Not because he’s gonna let the consequences decide whether he obeys or not. It’s just always relaxing to hear a detailed threat.

“I’ll make sure you’re not concussed. I’ll drag you inside. I’ll ice your face, and I won’t fuck or hit you all day. You want that?”

“Sounds like torture. I’ve got it under control, sweetheart.”

“Then stop fucking around already.”

The Unidentified Flying His Own Fucking Body Part slams into his cheek. A pulled and open-handed punch. A _whump_ that turns his head more than it hurts. A bruise will likely form along his occipital bone, but that’s it. There’s no leverage for him to get a good wallop in when he’s twisted in that position.

He gives Steve the kind of grin that normally goes along with having a mouth full of blood and a full-on black eye after having sent the _other_ guy crying to the ER. Steve gives him the same kind of grin back, but then again, Steve hasn’t got many other facial expressions.

The left hand does a much more impressive job wrapping around his hair and tugging his head back. Matching quivery strains shoot through his neck and the muscles in his side right beneath where the flesh and metal butt up against each other. He droops to the right. The pain in his scalp’s like a dozen kebab sticks skewering in, preparing him for the barbecue. He stares unblinkingly at Steve, waiting for permission to stop.

Steve applauds a few times. Quietly, tinged with sarcasm. Bucky stops hurting himself and bows, and when he straightens, Steve pulls him close. An arm around his back and a hand on his waist. Mouth brushing Bucky’s cheek, he says, “How’d I get so lucky?”

Bucky closes his eyes and breathes in deep. “Lopped off a rabbit’s foot. Why’re you getting sappy? Steve.”

Steve kisses his eyelid, “’Cause it’s my me-given right to. Now come on, dumbass.” And he grabs Bucky’s hand and drags him to the low-hanging branch. “Copy my motions.”

“Sir, yes, sir.”

Steve raises one eyebrow at him, mouth puckered, then squeezes his hand and drops it. He jumps and grabs the branch in both hands so he’s hanging. A huge little kid on the first rung of the monkey bars. His untied shoelaces dangle low enough they almost kiss the ground.

Bucky follows suit. The branch is thicker than the more consistently sized of his two deltoids, though not by a whole bunch, not in the grand scheme of all tree branches ever; compared to the trunk, at least, it's a skinny thing that maybe they shouldn't both be dangling from like they're still kids. Maybe, _maybe_ it's as big around as one of Natasha’s thighs. But it takes both their weights and files no complaints.

Bucky says, “Fucking freaky ballerina tree,” and Steve says, “ _What_?” and Bucky says, “I said what I said,” and then he says, “This it? Do I just hang here?”

“Close.” A hypnotist’s watch turned big and blond and autonomous, Steve swings himself back and forth. Bucky does too, out of sync. “But no bubble gum cigar, Buck.” A blur of motion, and then he’s koala-clinging, a hand on each side of the branch and his legs on either side too, curling up and crossed at the ankles. Sympathetic pain pangs in Bucky’s neck at how far Steve tilts his head back so he and Bucky can see each other. His hair, somehow still damp from the shower, grazes Bucky’s arm. “Like this. I don’t gotta tell you not to kick me in the head when you do it.”

“Could tell me anyway. Could put some bite in your voice.” But he graciously mimics Steve without detailed instructions on how to not give him a concussion, bringing his legs up to grasp the branch so their scalps face each other.

“My voice has got plenty of bite already. You saying there’s not enough biting around here, buddy?” Steve’s body thuds softly when it hits the ground. He walks into view. Bucky’s not stupid; he knows he’s done doing as Steve does on top of doing as he says, and so stays put.

“I’d never say that. Just the right amount of biting, I think.”

“That’s right. Lower your right hand down here a sec.”

Steve threads their fingers together and closes his teeth around the meaty blade edge of Bucky’s hand. Bucky gasps, jerks, tightens the left hand’s grip and locks it in place. His palm is smashed to Steve’s face, almost smothering, but Steve’s free nostril moves air against Bucky’s skin in tiny motions. The bite narrows to one fold of flesh tugged away from the bones of his palm. Slides wetly along to the pad of fat beneath his little finger. Doesn’t relent.

Skin kindling catching flame, Bucky says, “Steve Steve Steve,” and thrusts his hips once but forces them down at the first touch of bark to his half-hard dick. “ _Steve_.”

No more biting. Steve licks a wide stripe up Bucky’s palm before unlacing their fingers. Friendly, he says, “You can have that back now.”

“Sweet of you.” The feel of rough bark on his bitten hand, on the other—well, hand—soothes him. “Now what? Am I just—Are you tying me or up or taping me like this or somethin’? Super glue?”

“Nope.”

Steve fetches the switch and knife off the ground. Tucks the knife in his pocket, and comes and tugs on Bucky’s hair, a painless order. Craning his neck enough to have a good view of Steve’s face below him means arching his back, and putting up with the bark pressed to his dick. More than worth it. The switch taps against his lips, and Bucky kisses it. In response, it comes down harsher than a tap, knifelike, and he shouts from far back in his throat. The absence of blood, when he licks his lips, surprises him.

Steve’s mouth is curled up at the corner. He says, “Good boy,” and brushes the switch over Bucky’s cheek. The blow Bucky braces for doesn’t come. “You don’t gotta keep straining to look at me if it hurts.”

“I’m fine. I wanna see you. I like looking at you, you know that?”

“Flattery’s not gonna make me go easier on you.”

“Yeah, well I’m kinda angling for the opposite here.” And this is why the impending crick in his neck will be worth it: locking eyes with Steve while they look at each other like they both just smelled the same blood in the water and it’s time to feast on Esther William’s whole aqua ballet troupe (Bucky _knows_ sharks aren’t really bloodthirsty like that, okay, but some wacky sea monster’s gotta be).

“Oh, you think you’re allowed to angle for things, now?” The switch taps against his cheek in threat.

“Maybe. An acute angle. Nothing dramatic.” The switch fulfills its threat, and he gasps and swallows like he can pull the clean pain of it down deep into his gut. There, digestive juices will break it down, and his blood’ll be flooded with its nutrients. “Thank you.”

“Don’t call yourself ‘cute.’ Anyway, no tape. No glue. No tying.” Between each sentence: stinging flicks of the switch to Bucky’s upper back. Just enough to make him hiss and clench his gluteal muscles. “You’re holding yourself up like that until you can’t anymore. That an issue?”

“Not in the least, baby. The opposite of an issue. It’s an, uh, eussi. Or should it be both backward and upside-down? That would be, uh, anssi?”

“ _You’re_ both backward and upside-down. And I’m gonna beat the backward and upside-down outta you, ain’t I?” He leaps up to catch the branch one-handed and deliver a fleeting kiss to Bucky’s mouth. Then he’s on the ground, walking to where Bucky doesn’t need to kill his spine seeing him. All he’s gotta do is turn his head a little.

“If that meant anything, sure, yeah. You’re gonna do that, please, Steve.”

“You don’t need to know what it meant for it to mean anything. You don’t know what most things mean, do you?”

The first strike to Bucky’s ass doesn’t hurt at all. It’s friendly even, a reminder of his solidity. Same’s true of the second and the third. Like Steve’s saying to him, _Oh, there you are_ , and Bucky thinks, _Oh. Here I am._

Steve watches the hits like he’s learning from them. Same focus in his eyes as when he studies a map. That set of his mouth is straight out of the first time Bucky ever taught him some of the punch combinations he’d been learning at the gym.

Steve asks again, “I said, ‘You don’t, do you?’”

“Don’t—”

“Know what most things mean. Pay attention.” And Bucky’s ready for the next one to hurt in rebuke, but it still doesn’t. Here he is; here he is; here he is, a body.

“Right. No, I don’t. All gobbledygook. Can’t glean a lick of anything anyone’s ever said.”

“Oh, you need a lick?” And Steve, the asshole, brings the switch up to his own mouth and licks it. Thoroughly. The next hit, to the stretched skin where Bucky’s thigh and ass meet, is an entire fucking torrential downpour of stinging both from the wetness and from how he flicks his wrist properly. “What’s that,” he says, over Bucky’s keening, “a triple entendre?”

“ _Fuck_. Thank you, Steve. Fuck. More of that, please.”

“Aw, did you think I wasn’t really going to hurt you? What did I tell you, honey? I’m gonna put you in a tree. Did that.” In lieu of a laser pointer, he uses the switch to tap the expanse of branch between Bucky’s hands and feet. “And once you’re in the tree—” He runs the switch’s narrow tip across Bucky’s chest, over his nipple, and Bucky shivers— “I’m gonna hit you with a stick. Like a piñata.”

“Like a piñata. Yeah.” A breathy laugh leaves him. “You know people do that to bees too?”

“What? Isn’t that asking to get stung?” Steve frowns. “Or needlessly cruel. Anyone doing that deserves to get stung.”

“No, it’s not cruel. It’s—Sometimes the hive swarms, divides up and some of ’em try to fly off somewhere else. But they’ll take a little pit stop in a giant fucking bee ball hanging from a tree branch. Then you can get a stick and knock them into a box to get them back. It’s safe.”

“That’s. Excuse me. How is that _safe_?”

“It’s not—Okay, it’s less violent than you’re thinking. You don’t go at them like you’d go at a piñata, all right? It’s not actually the same. But, look, _conceptually_.”

“Oh, _conceptually_ . Tell me more about _conceptually_ , Buck.”

“Look. Steve. Look: Say I ran away and tried to hide in a tree from you. Would you hit me with a stick until I fell in a box?”

“Obviously. I’m not letting you get away from producing my honey.” He taps Bucky’s erection with the switch, and it doesn’t hurt or anything, but Bucky gasps, electricity up his spine.

Getting a hold of himself, he says, “That’s disgusting, Steve. Don’t call my come honey unless you want me to jack off in your tea.”

“Any tea you jack off in is going down _your_ throat. And I’ll call your body parts anything I like. They’re mine to name.” This time, the stick hits him on the back of both thighs, hard and sharp, so he yelps and swings a little, like he’s light enough to be knocked around by a breeze. “Aren’t they mine?”

“Yeah, Steve. You could call my dick a traffic cone if you wanted.” He swallows. “Call my nipples ruffly satin pillowcases from Sears **.”**

Steve covers his mouth with one hand, but his shoulders shake with silent laughter. Pride blooms in Bucky’s chest, all the better for how it’ll be knocked out of him soon enough. Replaced with shame viscous and satisfying as mud. Steve uncovers his mouth and clears his throat.

“Yes. Exactly. But I’m gonna give you a choice here.” Another strike to Bucky’s thigh, but lighter. A reminder. “In light of this new fun fact. Do you want me to knock candy out of you right now, or do you want to make honey for me?”

“You calling me sweet?”

“Well, it’s your only good attribute. Dumb as a tire fire, ugly as sewage, stubborn as ten mules chained together. But. You are sweet. I’ll give you that.”

“‘Stubborn.’ The hypocrisy on you.”

The switch whips the whole of his ass at once, burning, and he whines. “The welts I’m gonna leave on you.”

“Please.”

“Honey or candy? Are you my escaping swarm of bees, or is this my birthday party? Huh, Buck? Come on. It’s only two choices. You can do this.”

“Can I have a minute?”

“You can have twenty-seven seconds. Go over that and see what happens.”

“I won’t. Starting now?”

“No.” Steve’s silent for exactly thirty-three seconds, so Bucky’s thirty-three times more impressed and horny and in love when Steve says, “Starting now.”

Pros of being a swarm of bees: mandatory sound-effect-making; he can imagine he’s really soft and fluffy; he’ll be something that belongs to Steve and tried to leave because it was too stupid not to and now Steve has to reel him back in, reminding him where he’s supposed to be. Cons: they’ve got no box for him to fall into and no bee-keeping outfit for Steve to wear; the next time he sees a real bee he’ll be torn between guiltily confessing or letting the bee remain ignorant and unsullied, choking down the knowledge that he sexualized a friend like that.

And the big pro of being a piñata—

“Time’s up.”

“Piñata.”

—is that Steve’s birthday’s always been Bucky’s favorite day. It messed him up a little, when he found out the American propaganda machine had legally fucking changed it. But in a selfish way, he likes being one of the few people to know that the only thing perfectly fitting about the date is that Steve is, yes, actually a Cancer. That’s not a lie. Of course he fucking is.

Steve says, “All right,” and pats Bucky’s ass. “But come to think of it, I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to beat a piñata blindfolded.”

“You could blindfold me.”

“Not what I meant. Properly I oughta be swinging blind and wild while I whack at you.”

“Yeah, and properly I oughta be papier mâché and full up with Junior Mints and Mike and Ikes. Somehow, we’ll make do.”

The switch snaps against Bucky’s ass. “At least you _do_ look like a dumb, flashy donkey. All ears and snout.” He laughs like he knows he’s actually describing himself, and whips Bucky again, falling into a rhythm. Whipping him like a nervous tic.

“Shoulda put a harness and muzzle on me.”

“Next time. I’ll make sure.”

And Bucky’s muscles feel like ruffled feathers, or a cat pet the wrong way. There's a spooked rippling beneath his skin with each strike. A thing separate from pain, because it doesn’t even hurt every time. The only constant is how he moves in response, and he _does_ , shifting, swinging, shimmying his shoulders. Flexing his hands, and the bark’s gonna strip the skin of his right palm, he’s not careful.

Steve says, “Y’know, I don’t know what you mean, Buck—” Two fast strikes to the back of his thigh have Bucky squirming and moaning— “saying you’re not papier mâché. You’re fragile. Cheaply made.” He flicks the last spot he whipped with his fingernail, lighting it up. “Not much more than a kinda fun art project for a rainy afternoon.”

This one burns on impact, a stinging stripe branded on his skin as if by magic, like it was always there, and Bucky shouts, “Fuck!” then quiets, panting. “Yeah, you’re right. Could I—”

“What?” This one doesn’t hurt, until it does, the heat of it radiating through him more than makes any sense.

So his words sound crushed to fine powder, even as they retain their basic shape, when he says, “Wrap my arms more around the branch? It’s—My shoulders.” Having his upper body hang down like this, so poorly supported, isn’t wrecking him yet, but he recognizes the ache creeping into his elbows. First it makes a home there, and then it goes exploring, up his arms and into his neck. Down his back.

Steve raises an eyebrow at him, then narrows his eyes, and his face disappears from view. Like he’s checking out Bucky’s shoulders from beneath. A real Michelangelo inspecting his art. “Yeah, of course. Rearrange yourself, come on.” Sensors register Steve’s fingertips skating over the left shoulder. “Come on, Buck, what do you think? Did I or did I not just lecture you about injuring yourself?”

“You did, probably.” Wrapping his arms around the branch instead of his hands pulls him up and away from Steve’s touch. “Hard to say on account of my poor memory.” His spine sits straighter now. His hands cup his elbows. This is more like hugging the branch. “Can you still reach me?”

“I don’t know.” A searing line straight across his ass, and he wriggles closer to the branch. “You tell me.”

“Seems, uh. Likely.” That same line again, flaring brighter, and Bucky moans and lifts his head to kiss the bark above him. Tilts his head back and says, “Yeah, you’ve got it. You’re fully in control here, buddy. Gold star.”

“Aw, shucks. Thanks, Buck.” A scattering of sharp flicks to his upper back. The pain’s the kind of glowing stars you can only see out here. Fat, blinding clusters you wish you could’ve pinned to your hatband in a past life.

If he had to, Steve would leap up for every strike. Slam-dunking welts and bruises into Bucky’s skin. In a world where Bucky was tied to the tree’s very top like to a pirate ship’s mast, Steve would climb after him. Would beat him while swinging precariously, close to the sun.

Hits pile up. Between his shoulders. On his back, his ass, his thighs. The odd flurry of gnat-like bites from the switch pinks up his fleshy inner arm, or the stick snakes in at an odd angle to snap down over his pecs. Each distinct pain bleeds together, felt-point drawings dunked in water. All of him’s hurting, hot, burning bright as a tiger in the night or whatever the fuck. Burning bright in the daylight, all the hotter for how the sun’s beating down on them. Sweat beads up on his skin in a million places, harsh as rugburn when it runs and finds his rawer bits.

And all through it, Bucky’s shaking, swinging, his breath rippled with endless laughter and hitching with sobs. Through it, Steve’s saying beautiful bullshit. Saying, “What if I were blindfolded? Say I got confused enough to think a suggestion out of your ugly mouth could ever be worthwhile.”

“You wouldn’t. You’re not dumb like me.”

“No, but we’re imagining, knucklehead. Fun thought exercise.”

“All-all right. Say you—Fuck! Did. Could wrap my shirt around your eyes.”

“That’s the smartest thing you’ve said all day. Then I couldn’t take extra special care where I hit you. Not like I’m doing now.” He takes some extra special care in one particular spot, and Bucky howls. “I’d just be battering at you. I could break your bones. Could bruise up your dumb little face.”

“Fuck. You’re welcome to. I can wait here while you go back for my shirt.” Of course being blindfolded wouldn’t mean Steve would miss him entirely. Wander off in the other direction and try to beat an empty tree. Steve’s full-on magnetized toward Bucky. Steve’s got some kind of homing signal programmed into him. Steve’s a messenger pigeon and Bucky’s his roost and a blindfold would just mean he got the details wrong and really worked Bucky over.

“Nah. I’m not letting you out of my sight. But if I _did,_ eventually, I’d break you open. You’d spill right in the grass. All those sweet good things inside you making a mess just for me. Just for my birthday.”

“What—What’s in me?”

“I don’t know yet, Buck, now do I? You need to tell me that.” The stick wraps around to bite at Bucky’s inner thigh. Steve’s moving systematically, working his way down one thigh in stinging even lines. The fresh-baked-bread-soft inner flesh is caught in the crossfire each time. Sliced and toasted.

“I’m—I said. What? Junior Mints.”

“Do I like Junior Mints, Buck?”

“No, fuck, sorry—Oh, shit.” The switch gets him in the crook of his knee and he says, “ _Steve_ ,” and Steve says, “Not a nice thing to give me then, is it?” and it’s true. Not very nice at all, to only be full of Junior Mints when Steve hates those, when Steve’s giving him such a nice thing right now, snapping that stick against the back of his other knee and then working his way up that thigh. Rotating the giant, invisible wrench that screws up Bucky’s face. Setting off the waterworks—tears _and_ snot. The deluxe edition.

Voice crackling like worn pleather, Bucky says, “No. No mints in me. Malted milk balls. Sky Bars. Peanut butter cups. Hershey fucking. Kiss—” He hisses through his teeth.

“Sounds like a lot of stuff that’s gonna melt out here in the sun.”

“Yeah, well _I’m_ gonna melt you keep this up. Fuck, Steve. _Any_ candy’d melt inside me. Fucking bubblegum would turn to sugar water, Steve, baby.”

“All right. What else you got inside you then, huh?” Bucky doesn’t answer fast enough, maybe. The switch snakes in to snap down right over his nipple, and he shrieks. “What, Buck? Any toys in there?” Again over his nipple, and the noise that leaves him sounds more like it’s leaving a hyena cub caught in a coffee grinder.

He twists his shoulders, trying to angle his chest so Steve can’t get to it again, but his spine twinges and he quits it. Can’t writhe away, and can’t cover himself up. He has to keep gripping the branch. But Steve is merciful and prompts, “Any. Toys?” with only taps of the stick’s thin end to Bucky’s reddened nipple.

Bucky manages, “My dick,” and gets his ass beat. The tip flicks between his cheeks, sharp and hot and so close to his hole. Sometimes in Scooby Doo cartoons, Scooby’s so scared he leaps straight up into Shaggy’s arms, and that’s Bucky right now, body jumping in an attempt to cradle the tree branch closer. To be cradled back.

This time, the stick slips between Bucky’s ass cheeks and pokes at his hole with purpose, before drawing away and running, briefly, along the underside of his dick, which pulses, sending pleasure up his spine and dripping wetness.

“That the only toy in there?”

“No. It’s. My dick? And my hole. And my mouth. Hair? You like—Playing. With my hair.”

“Your whole ass, I think. All this for me to play with.” Straining upward, Steve kneads at the meat of his ass, fingers pressing like they aim to lay new bruises over already red and swollen flesh. “Your eyes, since that’s where all the tears come from. Actually. I think it’s just you in there.”

“It’s what?”

“Just you. The only toy in the piñata. I have a real swell time whaling on you until you burst. Until you’re crumbling. And what should show up in the grass, in the papery remains, but you. A curled up, colorful fucking _disaster_.”

“Yeah?” Bucky takes a long breath in, shudders. Licks up the tears that are rolling past his lips, down his chin. Twists his head to wipe his eyes on his inner arm. Laughs a little. “What are you gonna do with me?”

“With my new toy? Come on, fuckhole. You know what kinda things I like to do with my property.”

“Oh, gee.” He’s giggling. “I can’t remember. Remind me?”

Steve sighs loudly. “If I really gotta.” Strikes come with hardly any pause between them, blanketing his ass and thighs. In the moments when Bucky’s still able to look right at Steve, relatively clear-eyed and clear-headed, Steve’s pupils are blown huge, his mouth open, his whole arm quivering with the rapid up-down flick of his wrist.

But those are very short moments. Soon, Bucky’s thrashing, yelling. Can hardly remember that he’s not tied or taped, with how _trapped_ he feels, backed into a corner. Held tight and secret in Steve’s fist, not at all afraid that he might thrash so hard his grip slips loose and he falls. Heavy heat floods his body like it’s hollow, filling him up. And obviously he’s hollow; obviously he’s entirely skin, so much skin, red and alive and containing another copy of himself, rattling around in there, for Steve to break out and suck on and play with.

His heavy balls flop uncomfortably; the only friction on his dick is the scrunched-up smooth flesh of his stomach and it’s still too much. The muscles in his neck are shaking; his face is pressed into his soft shoulder. Steve says, “You trying to hide from me?” and Bucky doesn’t answer.

Steve stops hitting him. Steve lays the switch’s tip against Bucky’s cheek, over the hair sweat-stuck there, obscuring him, and says, “Hey.”

“No,” Bucky remembers how to say. The absence of pain is—He hears a bird nearby. He’s pretty sure he did melt, like he threatened to. Just a big sticky blob in a tree. A deflated hot air balloon. “I wouldn’t. Hide from you.”

“Well you’re too far away. Swing down here. Upside-down, I mean.” The switch rubs at his left bicep, the motion visually comforting but too light for the sensors to register. “Just let your arms go, come on.”

“I don’t—I don’t know if I can. Can you make me?”

“Tell me what you mean.”

“I’m—fuck. Just. Peel me off? You know how they’ve got that Goo-Gone shit? Like that? I feel. Plastered.”

“You can’t _get_ plastered any better than I can.”

“You _know_ what I mean.”

“All right, I got it. I can make you come to me. Just a sec.” He flips the stick around, and the end that rests against Bucky’s hip now is thicker. Sturdier. Likelier to satisfyingly knock him out of the park than it is to sting. If hitting him’s the plan, which maybe it’s not. Hard to say what it would feel like if Steve just poked him until he came dislodged.

He imagines that the stick’s a broom handle, and he’s the big ugly spider living on Steve’s ceiling. Not that he wouldn’t be welcome in Steve’s home; Steve would just prefer he live somewhere lower down. In a secluded corner of Steve’s bedroom, Bucky would spend all day spinning webs with his ass. Catching pests, a tiny guard dog. His ass would be _so_ useful if it could produce silk. But this is okay too. Steve seems to find his ass useful enough as is.

Steve says, “I know you’re stupid-strong, Buck, but I need you to be weak for me here. Give it up. No fighting.” And he gets the stick’s end under Bucky’s right hand. Wedged between the palm and the metal, where he’s holding himself tight. Just like prying the lid off a can of paint, Steve angles the stick to lift Bucky’s hand, and Bucky’s weak for him. Allows it to happen. Limply, his hand falls from where it’s been lifted, landing with a _smack_ on the other hand’s dorsal side.

Steve repeats the wedging with that hand, but Bucky can’t just be weak for him on this one. The stick might snap in response to the metal. For this, he has to perform pliability. Pull his own hand up and away, but let the stick think it had anything to do with it. Grips broken, his arms begin to slide off from around the branch. Centimeter by centimeter. He relaxes, lets his shoulders fall, and their natural improbable weight acts as an anchor, sinking to the ocean floor. He falls, and he hangs upside-down, and the blood rushes fast to his head.

He says to Steve’s legs, “Hey.”

Steve says, “That’s not how I want you.”

“No?”

A tap, from the switch, to his calf. “Want your knees wrapped around the branch. Not your ankles.”

“You gonna make me do it right? I mean. I could manage.” If he moved fast enough, he could first slide one calf further over the branch, gripping it with his knee, then swing the other up and around. But maybe he can’t move fast enough, limp and sore as he is, with his brain more or less a squishy, rotting berry due to how safe he is right now.

“Aw. Kind of overconfident for a dumb little slut who doesn’t even know which way is up. No, I’ll make you. Hold this for me.”

“Wh—” Steve shoves the switch between Bucky’s teeth like a bit, and Bucky moans and closes his eyes. Licks at the wood. It mostly tastes like dirt.

Grunts, and the sounds of Steve’s body in motion. Then, Steve’s hands are sure around his ankles. Enacting the motions Bucky can’t pull off in this state. Yanking his left leg all the way over the branch, hooking the knee. And in an unbalancing blink, lifting the right leg, threading it under the branch, hooking it back over. This pulls Bucky higher off the ground. Here’s the kind of stage magic he always dreamed of experiencing, the gears and pulleys that make actors fly. Firm pressure, down, on his ankles, orders him to grip. He clenches calf and thigh muscles around the branch. Steve pats his knee, and lands back in front of him. Must be bending down, with how his hot breath puffs into Bucky’s face.

Bucky opens his eyes. Steve’s smiling at him. Steve bites his nose. Steve says, “Gimme,” and takes the switch from Bucky’s mouth. Tosses it to the side. “There. Made you. How do you like that?”

Bucky grins at him. “Like it perfect. Thank you. You know what else you could make me?”

“Clearly I can’t make you be less of a demanding little bitch.”

“Steven! I’m aghast! You satisfy my demands plenty.”

“That’s not the same thing.”

“Maybe. But really: I could be your tire swing.” He’s hanging at the right height.

“Yeah?” His fingertip pokes Bucky’s sternum. Pressing hard, he draws a circle, chest to navel and back up. “I carve a hole in you and punch it right out?” Now, he straightens up and grabs Bucky’s hip, tight. “Climb in you and use you like that. Just for fun? That what you want? To be destroyed like that for me?”

Bucky whimpers and uses his remaining energy to swing forward enough to wrap his arms around Steve’s neck. Burying his face there, he kisses the underside of Steve’s jaw. “I don’t know. Yeah. Probably.”

“Yeah. All cut up for me.” A hand on the back of his skull. Petting, sweet. Steve’s voice is soft.

“You’d let me. You wouldn’t even be scared.”

Bucky shakes his head. “I wouldn’t.”

“Stupid little fucktoy. It’s not even because you’re brave, is it? You just don’t understand.”

Bucky shakes his head harder. “No. But you’re here to explain. You can tell me what’s good and what’s bad.”

“Yeah. I can do that. But I can’t decide: Would it be good or bad to let you come right now?”

“I dunno.” He sniffles. His knees tighten around the branch, and the welts there throb, mashed into the bark. Between that and the petting, he’s crying again. Getting Steve’s shirt wet. “Fuck.” He tightens the loop of his arms too, at the back of Steve’s neck, urging him closer. “Good? Maybe bad.”

“What would be bad about it?”

“Just if it were. Too much? I’m fucking skinned right now, Steve.”

“Flayed. Yeah. Looks like there was a swarm of bees here after all, how red and swollen you are.” His hand creeps up to pinch Bucky’s ass, and Bucky wails and flinches full-bodied. Steve says, “Shh. Shh.” Pets his ass instead, though that hurts too. Like crouching over a candle.

Bucky says, “Wasps, Steve. You mean wasps.”

“Okay. I mean wasps. You know how I hate WASPs.” Seems like the guy’s been practicing how to pronounce capital letters properly in his spare time.

“Oh, you and me both.”

“I can be nice about making you come. I promise. _Not_ ,” he clarifies when Bucky grunts and makes to pull away, “nice-nice. You know what I mean.” He smushes Bucky’s face back into his neck with the hand on his skull. “I mean careful. I’ll make sure it’s good. Good?”

“Good. Please. If it’s good, I want it.”

“There we go. You’re gonna stay hanging upside-down like that if you think you can.” Gently, he removes the arms looped around his neck, and lowers Bucky to hang straight down.

Any blood that managed to escape Bucky’s head while they were hugging rushes right back. Dizzying him. He says, “Upside-down’s good. But I don’t know how much longer I can hold myself up.”

“That’s okay. I can help.” And he does, grabbing both of Bucky’s ankles and tugging them toward him. So his heels brush the backs of his thighs. Anchoring all of Bucky’s bent and dangling body, shoving the wood more firmly against the welted backs of his knees. They’ll heal by nightfall, most likely, but right now, Bucky’s not even _flayed_ ; he’s in the middle of the flaying process. A rabbit Steve’s hung up and skinning for dinner. Alive for the knife, for the stripping down. Pain flashes through him in waves blaring and steady as sirens. Fluid from his dick splatters on the dirt right before his eyes.

It must show on his face. Steve says, “That all right? Your knees—” and eases up, but Bucky resists the merciful pushing at his ankles.

He says, “It’s good. It’s more than good. Shit, I could come just from you doing that, I think.”

“Oh yeah?” The hands on his ankles push and then pull, push and then pull, working his knees against the wood, and the sirens flare to brighter red, shoot to high and piercing, some Doppler Effect bullshit. He’s shrieking, writhing, making it harder for himself, eyes closed. Tears slip down his forehead; his left hand shoots out to grip Steve’s leg.

Steve stops. The pain recedes to background noise. Doppler Effect bullshit. He says, “Nah. That’s not how I want to make you come. But that got you close.”

“It all got me close.” He lets go of Steve’s leg. “Sorry.”

“Nothing’s broken. Christ, you’re—”

“Yeah?”

“Exactly how I want you. I was gonna say you can hold on to me, but no. I like you floppy like this. All right.” His grip tightens around Bucky’s ankles, and Bucky’s hips jump. His balls ache. He needs. “You can come when you like.”

Upside-down, Bucky’s got a perfect view of how Steve has to go up on tiptoes to take Bucky’s dick in his mouth. All he can see is dirt, grass, his own spilled wetness, and the creases in the leather of Steve’s boots, between the vamps and the toe boxes. The cuffs of his jeans, one spotted with old blood; Bucky rolled them up for him this morning as they dressed.

Steve’s mouth sinks all the way down, and he sucks. Bucky squints and focuses on that bloodstain, trying not to misbehave and thrust his hips and fuck into Steve. He has to be good and still and take it and his face is so hot, his thoughts swimmy. It’s amazing there’s any blood in his dick. But it’s full and pulsing and Steve bobs his head up and down its length, not aiming to draw this out. Bucky redirects all squirming to his shoulders, his hands, curls his toes in, which Steve might feel. The flexing tendons near his ankles.

Every time he sucks Bucky down to the root, Steve’s nose bumps his heavy balls, and he feels his dick twitch against Steve’s tongue. Steve pulls off, and more fluid drips to the ground. Hoarse, Steve says, “Come on, Buck. Be a good piñata and break open for me,” and sucks him down before Bucky can make words happen. All he makes happen is a wobbly cry.

Steve sucks aggressively, like he’s willing himself to shapeshift into a vacuum for Bucky’s pleasure, and Bucky can picture the almost-angry expression on his face. The I- _will_ -figure-out-how-to-assemble-this-Ikea-furniture-without-looking-at-the-instructions-even-if-it-takes-me-all-week expression. His nose bumps against Bucky’s balls, and he stays there, at the root, Bucky’s dick in his throat, tongue throwing a dance party so Bucky feels like his dick is a disco ball. Spinning, refracting the light. And Steve _tugs_ Bucky’s ankles sharply so the welts scream, the dance party soundtrack, and okay, yeah.

With one quick last lick beneath the crown, Steve pulls off, and Bucky’s dick pulses hard. Bucky writhes as much as he wants now, hips thrusting. His come splatters all over Steve’s face.

When it’s over, he doubts that it’s over. There must be more inside him. This must be all he is now. Like a really ugly fruit that bloomed in the tree. A fruit that just comes and hurts and squirms. Definitely he can’t remember how a person goes about doing anything else.

But Steve says, “I let go, you think you can hold yourself up a bit longer?” and Bucky forces himself to think about being a person who does stuff.

“I—I think. Thirty. Seconds. A minute? Why?”

“’Cause someone needs to lick this filth off me. We can wait until you’re down.”

“No. No I can—Do it? Wait.” He considers more carefully. Practices flexing he muscles in his legs. They’re a couple shades short of fully gelatinous. “Yeah, I can. Please. Lemme clean up my mess. If I fall you can just catch me, please.”

“All right.” Steve lets go. Bucky tightens his legs around the branch with everything left in him. And Steve gets low, kneeling in the dirt. And puts his face up close to Bucky’s face. There’s come in his eyebrows and eyelashes, on his cheeks, on his lips. He says, “This is just for now. Obviously I’ll have to dunk my whole face in grain alcohol later, I ever want to be clean again.”

Bucky says, “I know. I’m real sorry,” and he laps his mess up off of Steve’s skin. Steve grudgingly closes his eyes to make it easier to get at the bits in his eyelashes. Used to be Bucky thought he’d like the taste one day. That it was acquired. Steve’s never seemed to mind it, but it grosses Bucky out now the same as it did the first time Steve scooped some into his mouth after jerking him off while talking about finishing school. Even though it’s sweeter in this century, his body more pumped full of fresh produce, it’s gross. And that’s just fine. A good gross. He used to like when Steve would make him eat black licorice, and he likes this too.

Spit drying tacky all over his skin, Steve grimaces, but his eyes are bright. He says, “You ready to come down now?”

“Very.”

“Yeah, you look like a tomato.” His knuckles graze Bucky’s cheek. “A beet. A strawberry.”

“Yeah?”

“Yep.” He stands and gathers Bucky in his arms, a bridal carry, precarious and diagonal at first as he unhooks Bucky’s legs from the branch. “All red and puffy and ugly.” Like strawberries are known for being ugly. But Bucky’s too tired to make fun of him for that.

Steve tosses him to the dirt in a heap. Broken open, a colorful disaster, whimpering as the welts and bruises sing to life. If he writhes, the dirt might scrub him truly raw. Belated, he says, “Bam! Piñata!”

“It’s not like Yahtzee.” Steve lies down next to him. Legs over Bucky’s legs. A hand beneath his head.

“Who’s referencing Yahtzee? I’m referencing Bingo. Either way: piñata! You win.”

“We win.” He kisses Bucky’s shoulder.

They both lie still and catch their breath. They swing their lungs and send the weighted, baited lines bobbing into the air and wait for breath to bite.

At some point, the breath has bitten. The breath’s been reeled in, gutted, and eaten for dinner. And Steve says, “You want to start going to Bingo? They’ve got the gay kind and the elderly kind. The gay kind might still skew elderly, or we can make it skew elderly. There’s drag queens.”

“I’d love to. What kinda shit can we win?”

“Oh, _this_ isn’t a ‘we’ win situation. I win I’m keeping those sparkly temporary tattoos for myself.”

“No, you’re fucking not. You’re putting sparkly butterflies on each of my ass cheeks.”

“All right. But I get the rest of them. What’d you think, a kitten tattoo on my forehead?”

“Kitten tattoo chin. Puppy forehead.” He pokes each place as he names them. “Base of your neck, I’m seeing flowers. Daisies.”

“But your ass is butterflies.”

“Yeah.” What he does with his mouth probably less resembles a smile and more looks like he’s holding back vomit, but he’s tired. His muscles are tired. He’s smiling. “Like butterflies in the stomach. But butterflies on my ass, thinking about you.”

“That’s. Sweet? Is that sweet?”

“It’s sweet! It is. You make my ass nervous.”

“Aw, okay, yes. Then good. That’s exactly what I want. Oh! Is this a butterfly?” He pinches one of the welts, hard and nasty, and Bucky spasms and shouts his name. “Oh, never mind. Trick of the light. Wait, is that a—”

“Steven, I will die. Can you just brush your jeans up against my skin like a normal person until I accidentally get off again? Please? And then we can go drink that lemonade.”

“Well, geeze, if you’re gonna whine so much, fine.” He abandons his budding amateur lepidopterist career and tucks Bucky’s smarting ass against the rough fabric of his thighs.

  


**-**

 

At first, Bucky’s kneeling in the dirt, shoved down by a hand on the top of his head, while Steve sits on the edge of the hammock, legs splayed, one sneaker lightly resting on Bucky’s thigh in its pale jeans. Hands still damp from washing dishes, Steve said, _Let’s enjoy the hammock_ , and dragged Bucky outside and over to it by his wrist. Possibly he’s never seen a hammock used properly in his life and really does think it’s just a wobbly cloth single-occupancy chair.

Bucky puts his chin on Steve’s bare knee. He starts to unzip the cargo pocket on Steve’s shorts, but gets his knuckles smacked. “What do you think you’re doing?” Steve says, framing Bucky’s face in his hands, tilting it up so they can smile at each other. “Pickpocketing me?”

“I’m innocently enjoying the hammock. Are you?”

“Endlessly.” He swings back and forth a little. “It’s so peaceful up here.” He squints at the sky. “Too bad there are no pets allowed. No pets, no loud music, no smoking, no—”

“What, like this?” Because while Steve’s been busy being an asshole, Bucky’s successfully wormed a couple fingers into the cargo pocket and gotten his matches free. He strikes one on his teeth. Then plucks a blade of grass from beside his knee and holds it to the flame. Clenches the fast-burning grass between his teeth, and Steve plucks it from them and leans down to stub it out on Bucky’s thigh. A painless starburst of heat. Steve grinds the stubbed-out grass into Bucky’s jeans with his sneaker.

“Hey,” he says, and flicks Bucky on the nose. “You wanna stunt your growth?”

“I was just gonna light a match and ask you to make a wish. Your fault for setting me up for the joke.”

Steve slaps him on the cheek with a motion like swatting away a bug. Limp-wristed, stinging. Then he puts the same hand out in front of him, palm up. Bucky obediently puts the matches in Steve’s hand. And kisses the ball of his thumb.

Matches shoved in his pocket, Steve sighs. “All right, I guess you better get up here with me so I can keep an eye on you.”

“Yeah? And break the law?”

“Well, you already smoked. What’s a second violation gonna do? Hang on. Let me, uh, situate.” He eases himself further back into the hammock, his feet coming off the ground, and he swings his legs up to get horizontal, knocking one sneaker into the side of Bucky’s head as he goes.

“Ow!” Bucky rubs his skull. “You almost killed me.”

“Don’t whine. I’m trying to be nice.” An arm extends from the hammock, and Bucky takes Steve’s hand, letting himself be pulled up, then in, then back down, arranged so he’s tangled with Steve and they’re swinging lightly. Facing each other. Steve’s arm curls over Bucky’s ribs. His hand splays against his back. Fingers drumming along his spine.

Bucky says, “You’re my least favorite person.”

“That’s all right. As long as I’m also your favorite.”

“What do you think?”

“Say it.”

“You’re my favorite.”

Steve’s arm squeezing him tighter. Steve’s breath warm against his forehead. Steve’s mouth kissing the skin between brow and lid, a part of him that barely exists.

He knows, and he’s pretty sure Steve knows that he knows. But in the light, ghostly way Steve’s fingers move to touch his hip, he can feel Steve shoving down the Steve-specific biological imperative to not shut up. It makes him smile. “You can say it. It’s fine.”

Halfway through saying, “Who said I wanted to?” Steve’s face spasms like he wishes he _had_ resisted the biological imperative to be an asshole, if only this once, but Bucky doesn’t care. He smiles bigger and kisses Steve’s cheek. Steve adds quickly, “You’re my favorite.”

Bucky gasps. His left hand claps to his chest. The right comes between his face and Steve’s, knuckles smacking against his own forehead and careening his head back as if in a swoon. Rapidly fluttering his eyelashes tops the whole thing off, and as Steve’s saying, “I take it back. You’re terrible,” Bucky says over him in a shrill voice, “This comes as _quite_ the shock.”

“I’m going to murder you.”

He puts his normal voice back on. “Not if my secret admirer gets there first.”

“Yeah, I wonder who that might be.”

“I know how to find out.”

“That so?”

Bucky nods, and turns his face enough that he isn’t just talking to Steve’s neck when he calls, “Here, secret admirer!” He makes a psst-psst-psst cat-whisperer sound. “Heeeere, secret admirer. My body’s vulnerable and _wai_ -ting!”

Steve laughs, bouncing his forehead off the hand still pressed to Bucky’s forehead. His eyes are squinty and kind of damp. If he keeps grinning like that, natural and maniacal and beautiful, his face might freeze that way.

“Heeeeeere, secret admirer,” Bucky repeats, stage-whispering, to help the freezing process along, and Steve gets in the spirit. He lifts his head up and makes the spirit much louder.

“Come out come out wherever you are, Buck’s murderous secret admirer!” If they were in a cave right now, the echo would be deafening. A whole swarm of bats would come flying at their heads.

But they’re out here in the open air. Humidity’s spinning even Steve’s hair into the beginnings of a tumbleweed; there’s a breeze cool enough that Bucky would put on a sweater if he didn’t have his least favorite person and favorite personal space heater in his arms. The sun’s bleeding citrus and bubblegum colors across the sky, like a too-wet watercolor, happiness is so thick in his throat that if someone heimliched him, the resulting projectile could probably kill a man from any distance, and there are honest-to-god crickets somewhere nearby.

 _Sawing their creepy little legs together_ , Steve said a long time ago, in a forest full of cricketsong on the other side of the world, grumbling, and Bucky whispered in his ear, _You wanna saw_ my _creepy little legs together?_ and Steve looked at him in the disturbed-and-then-fond-and-then-disturbed-and-fond-stirred-together way he was always looking at Bucky back then. Softly ordered him to go to sleep the first chance he got.

Star-studded darkness sneaks up on them. Has them surrounded, and they’re still swinging, legs jumbled up, Steve scratching at Bucky’s cheek and Bucky walking his fingers across Steve’s pecs. His explanation of  _Cervidae_ animals shedding velvet from their antlers trailed off a while ago with a, “Yeah, anyway, it looks pretty fucking cool.”

Now, Steve’s scratching turns to stroking, and he clears his throat, so Bucky stills his fingers and looks at Steve’s face.

Steve says, “So you think he’s out there?”

Bucky’s too relaxed to pretend he doesn’t know what Steve means. “Sure. Why wouldn’t he be?”

“Oh, you know. I was just worried you might think it was all me.”

“What? How?” He sits up a bit to look at Steve properly, and can feel his mouth trying to grin without his say-so. “Whyever would I think that?”

“I did kidnap you. Now I know full well that I did it for your own good. But I also know what it must have looked like, after all those threats.”

“Oh my gosh, Steve. That never even occurred to me.” He’s smiling stupidly huge. Why fight it? “Of course it was for my own good. Because obviously—” He flourishes his left hand in the air between them, as though making a flat surface where Steve can place the explanation. He attempts to gesture toward his hand with all of his facial features at once.

“ _Obviously_. I had to get there before your admirer, didn’t I? It would have been the perfect plan, him coming after you while we were en route. But I smuggled you out ahead of schedule, messed up his strategy. Isn’t that right?”

“It should be right, but—”

“But?”

“But I don’t know. He might know the address. He might be on his way here. Steve.” He clutches the front of Steve’s shirt. “Steve, he could be here already.” He looks around wildly, braid whipping into Steve’s nose. Wonders if he can will the blood to drain from his face. “Just waiting in the woods for me.”

“Hey, hey.” Steve grabs his braid, using it to steer Bucky’s head so they’re facing each other. As he talks, his fingers work the braid apart, thumb slipping the elastic off the end. “I’m here with you, right? I wouldn’t let anyone but me hurt you.” He encourages Bucky’s hair to spill over his shoulders, tightly wavy from being braided while wet. “Do you trust me?”

“I obviously fucking trust you.” He takes the elastic from Steve to stash around his left wrist. Then ducks his head so his hair falls in front of his face, and he can peek out from behind it, wide-eyed. Rough-voiced. “But what if you _did_ let someone else hurt me? Accidentally. Because you went out and I was alone and defenseless.”

Steve pushes his hair back out of the way, forcing his face to be vulnerable and displayed. “Well that would be too bad, Buck. That would be very tragic.”

“Hmm. I’d _hate_ for that to happen. If you went somewhere else and someone tried to kill me while you were gone. That would be the worst.”


	5. the chess club murders

Steve stands and stretches, yawning and popping his back. Abruptly, the mood in the room shifts. Every noise and shape falls into sharp clarity, and the air between them grows thick.

Bucky’s on the carpet in front of the couch, the Science section from a March 2007 copy of the _Times_ propped up on one raised knee. At first, he was reading snippets aloud to Steve, who sat on the couch scribbling in a tiny notebook. But somewhere in there, his voice faded and he was just clutching Steve’s ankle with his left hand and reading. Birdsong occasionally pierced the silence and the scratch-scratching of Steve’s pen even through closed windows.

Currently, he’s neither clutching Steve’s ankle nor reading. Currently, his mouth contains too much spit. He swallows, sets the paper aside, and aims for casual when he says, “You going somewhere?”

“Yeah.” Steve puts a hand to the small of his own back, pushing to stretch further, then gestures at the door. “I was thinking I’d go for a run.”

“You want company? I could use the fresh air.”

“Nah.” When he looks at Bucky, his smile is tight and thin, but reaches his eyes. “You should run later.”

Bucky’s stomach twists. He licks his lips. “Yeah. That’s a good idea. We should split up, I think. That’s always the smartest move.” He’s made Steve sit through enough horror movies with him. Prepped Steve for how to play this, even if that wasn’t his motive at the time.

“I think so too. So nice that we agree. I’m gonna go throw on my workout clothes and leave through the window.”

“Sounds completely normal.”

“You know me. Completely normal.” Then he crouches down and takes Bucky’s face in his hands, holding him with care. Pecks him on the lips. Pulls back, still holding on. “Be safe while I’m gone. _Don’t forget_ to lock the window after me. And call me if you get too scared and need me to come back. I’ll have my phone.”

Bucky furrows his brow. “All right.”

“You have me on speed dial, right?” Bucky nods. “Good. Hang onto your phone, Buck. And just dial me up if something goes wrong while I’m gone.” He looks into Bucky’s eyes, unblinking, and okay, yeah. Bucky nods again, more firmly, then smiles.

“I got you. But you’re being awfully melodramatic. It’s just a run. I’ll be fine. I’ll do a crossword. Maybe have a snack. I’m sure there are no murderers lurking nearby or nothing.”

“Of course not.” Steve clears his throat, then kisses Bucky again. “Is there anything else you want to talk about before I leave?”

Bucky pauses, sticking his tongue in his cheek. Flips through the premise in his head, fast forwarding with two little arrows in the corner of his mental image, seeing if anything yanks him out and shakes him up wrong in a montage of Steve breaking in and chasing him with—who fucking knows, a paper bag over his head? The Bat-Man mask again? Chasing him through the night while Bucky screams, pinning him down, threatening him, armed maybe. No complications come to mind.

He says, “Nope.” He pops the _p_.

Steve presses their foreheads together. “Good. Be good.” And then he lets go, and walks to the bedroom. To put on workout clothes. To leave through the window.

The open window: a laughably blatant Chekhov’s gun. All Bucky has to do is be too stupid and carefree to lock up. Overly confident in his own immortality. His skin starts itching like it shrank in the wash and doesn’t fit right anymore; he can’t be sure how much time he has to just bop around the cabin before he’ll get to enjoy himself. If it’s enough for him to plan anything out or if he’ll have to wing it, really authentically at Steve’s mercy on the narrative front.

He hears the bedroom window slide open, the wood creaking, and Steve yells, “Bye, Buck!” and Bucky yells, “Yeah, bye!” Good security isn’t a completely fake concept, so he knows Steve can’t be going far; he’ll be keeping an eye on that window, wherever he is, whatever he’s up to.

The grandfather clock in the corner says it’s almost eight, which should mean—

Hanging onto his phone like Steve said, he crosses to the front window, and brushes aside the curtain. Sunlight saturates the sprawling field, glancing off the tops of the trees in the distance. But the desaturation process is beginning, the shadows more striking. The sun somehow softer. Far-off blinking light catches his eye: fireflies, flickering. The crickets will start sawing together their creepy little legs soon. The bug-zapping porch light is due to automatically switch on.

He shouldn’t assume he has much time at all. He lets the curtain fall shut, and dust puffs free from its folds. He sneezes into his elbow, and wipes his nose on his sweater. This place is ritzy as hell, but it’s old. Weighed down with time. Perfect for ghosts.

He won’t do a crossword, but he does have a snack and a glass of water. His mouth’s full of partially chewed banana as he puts his hair up in a bun. A ponytail might be easier to grab, but if he wants to make this easy, he can just trip and throw himself into the murderer’s arms.

Aside from his own footsteps, own small motions, and the ticking clock he tries to tune out, the cabin is silent. And the silence is huge. Anything can sneak in. All that free quiet space in the air.

Abandoning his empty water glass in the sink, he stuffs two curled fingers in his mouth. He bites down on the knuckles. His heart’s already thudding, a thrillingly alive thing in him. His phone’s in his pocket, easily accessible, but shoved far enough down that it won’t fall out when he runs. Which—He puts on the sneakers he abandoned by the doorway, their soles caked in dried mud. Ties the laces, but loosely, hoping they’ll come undone.

The knife block on the kitchen counter’s shoved behind some other shit: the espresso machine he spent the morning learning how to work, decorative pinecones, jars. He moves it to center-stage on the island, where their fruit’s scattered. There are plenty of knives in his duffle, but those are for real. He’s sweet and innocent right now; he has absolutely nothing to fear right now; he wouldn’t just be hanging out armed. He’ll get desperate, forced to find weapons in his surroundings. Maybe grab a banana instead of a knife in his panic. He hasn’t decided.

The next time he looks outside, the fireflies blink more clearly. Deep blue gobbles up the landscape, even as thin sweeps of sun stain the edges of things. The porch light is on. He watches bugs circle it with masochistic want.

And he’s getting too antsy, thinking that maybe he should do the crossword after all, that maybe Steve’s planning to keep him on edge for hours so he’ll work himself most of the way into dizzying anxious arousal without assistance, when there’s a thud in the bedroom.

He turns from the window. His heartbeat slows. He exhales and smiles, and squares his shoulders. “Hello?”

No answer. Another thud.

“Steven?” He raises his voice, stepping closer to the bedroom. “Is that you, honey?”

The silence stretches, and then his phone buzzes in his pocket. He has a text from a blocked number:

_NOT STEVE._

He stage whispers, “What? What does that mean?” Calls out, “Steve? I just got this weird message!” Still approaching the bedroom, he texts back:

_Um excuse me who is this???? Wrong number???????_

He doesn’t want to actually reach the bedroom, so he pauses, bouncing on the balls of his feet, staring at the phone screen, waiting, and it lights up with:

_RIGHT NUMBER, BUCKY ROGERS-BARNES._

The next text is just a row of knife emojis. Bucky says, “Gee whiz! Now what could _that_ mean? Boy, this gets more and more—”

A sharp cough, and then footsteps, and he jumps back a foot, surprise not completely feigned. He gets in one last, “Hello?”

And Steve says, “Hey there,” and walks out of the bedroom wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses. Holstered on his hip, he’s got a gun. His clothes are all black, but recognizably his; Bucky’s responsible for the chunk bitten out of that t-shirt collar.

Steve twirls the gun around his finger like a cowboy, and Jesus, Bucky wants to know when he learned to do that. Did he teach himself? Did Natasha teach him, no idea he was gonna use the knowledge for weird murder sex? He’s refused to let Bucky teach him any gun tricks, saying there’s no need. Steve twirls the gun again, and nods toward it, almost imperceptibly. Waiting, asking, just in case. But Bucky knows that Steve knows him; Steve knows what he can and can’t handle from a gun.

So he backs up toward the kitchen island. “Who are you?” He shakes his voice like it’s a tree with a kite stuck in its branches. “How’d you get in here? I didn’t hear the doorbell, if you—”

“Through the window. What the fuck do you think?” Steve holsters the gun, but keeps one hand on top of it. “I thought I heard your husband tell you to close that, Bucky.” He _tsk_ s. “How do you think he’ll feel when he sees what happened because you didn’t listen?”

Ideally, his husband will feel over the moon, seeing what happens in high definition, full-color. Frame-by-frame. But Bucky says, “What are you talking about?” The edge of the island digs into his back. “You know my name? Do I know you? I’m sorry, sir, I don’t recognize—”

“No, you don’t know me.” Steve laughs. “Though we are kinda pen pals.” He cocks his head to the side. “Why are you all the way over there, sweetheart? I can’t kill you from across the room. Come here.”

And he can’t not say, “Of course you can kill me from across the room, idiot. You have a gun.”

“What, this?” Steve pats the holster. “Sure, I could. You’ve got me there! But I’d like it if it didn’t come to that. Come on.” He extends his hand. “Come over here. Don’t be shy. Let me kill you. Buck.”

“I’m sorry. What? Let you _what_?” With his right arm, he gropes behind him, seeking the knife block. “I—I don’t think I heard you right.”

“Kill. You. You heard me just fine. Come on, I came all the way here. What, now I’m _not_ gonna murder you? Do you know how bad traffic was?”

“No.” His fingers wrap around a knife handle. “I haven’t listened to the radio today. How bad?”

“Very bad. Awful, even.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

Steve’s smile turns into something sweeter, knocked off-guard. “Thanks. That’s nice of you. But I’m feeling extra bloodthirsty after that. Just need a little killing to decompress, you know?”

“No, I don’t know. And I don’t, um.” His heart’s picking up again. Steve’s still standing there, smiling, so placid, like killing Bucky’s inevitable. Like he doesn’t even need to try to be scary. Bucky swallows hard. “I don’t think you gotta do that. What if I make you tea instead?”

“Aw, no, that’s okay. I’d hate to put you out. I’ll make my own when I’m done.” He beckons with one finger. “Come on. Don’t make me walk over there. This is happening whether you like it or not.”

“What’s happening again? Sorry, I’m _very_ forgetful. Decades of brain damage.”

“I’m _killing_ you. Jesus, I thought that Steve Rogers guy was just _kidding_ when he calls you stupid, but wow.” He laughs. “I’m a murderer, Bucky. I came here to end your life, and I’m getting a little tired of you stalling like this.” He takes one telegraphed step toward Bucky, and Bucky’s fingers tighten around the knife, and he pulls it free.

The paring knife gleams, sharp, well taken care of. Bucky backs up, holding it up in front of his face, knuckles turning white around the rustically unpolished wood handle. He shakes his head frantically. “You’re not going to kill me. You’re not allowed.”

“Oh, I’m not allowed, huh?” Steve beams, and walks closer, exaggeratedly slow. “You wanna call Steve so I can ask his permission then?”

“No. We don’t need to involve him. But I _won’t_ let you kill me.” With his free hand, he pats his pocket so Steve’ll understand his phone’s in there. He’s almost backed up all the way to the door. If he can distract Steve, who’s still prowling toward him, he can wrench it open. He can run. “Don’t come near me.” He flicks the tip of the knife in Steve’s direction. “I’m good with this. I can kill with this.”

“With something that little? When _you’re_ that little? Yeah, okay. Just put it down, all right? It’s not gonna do you any good. I’m a _real_ murderer, Buck. I kill _impressively_. This isn’t a game.”

The doorknob nudges at Bucky’s ass. Steve’s about three feet away. He glances between Steve’s face and the knife, calculating, and throws it so the handle smacks Steve’s cheek, the blade totally missing him, and turns the knob and thrusts himself out the door, running under the porch light, into the grass, arms windmilling.

Behind him, Steve yells, “Hey! You little fucker! Come back here! I’m gonna fucking beat your ass!”

Bucky yells over his shoulder, “I thought you were gonna murder me!”

“That’s what I said! I’m gonna fucking murder you!”

Bucky shrieks, and speeds up, heading for the woods. Behind him, he can hear Steve running at less than full speed. But Bucky’s going flat-out now, heating up, and he unzips and sheds his hoodie as he goes, flinging it over his shoulder without looking. There’s a muffled shout, and when he glances back, Steve’s paused in his tracks, the hoodie having smacked him in the face. Either Bucky’s aim is _supernaturally_ good, disconnected from conscious thought or intention, or Steve purposefully put himself in the hoodie’s path, and Bucky slows down to get an eyeful of what Steve does with his new prop.

The hoodie’s red lumberjack plaid lined with Sherpa, and it’s got _FRAGILE SLUT_ embroidered inside the sleeve, the one place no one might accidentally catch a glimpse. Steve untangles himself, snarling, and raises it to his nose and inhales like he’s planning to track Bucky by scent.

Then he drops it into the grass and gives chase again.

Not looking where he’s going and lightheaded with lust and affection, Bucky stumbles on a rock in his path. A cackle from Steve, who’s drawing closer. But he rights himself and turns his focus to escape, speeding into the dark of the woods, pushed along by the rhythm of his own voice whispering, “Loveyouloveyouloveyouloveyou,” giddy and urgent.

And he’s ten years old, playing the hybrid of tag and hide-and-seek that he and Steve favored so they wouldn’t have to address the fact that Steve couldn’t run without regular reprieve. That had been more fun than pure tag anyway. When he was the one seeking, he got to pretend he was a hardboiled P.I. In hiding, he always felt like an antihero, accused of crimes he hadn’t committed, waiting for Steve to bring him to justice, and it was a puzzle, a _project_ , he remembers, skidding as the trail branches off. Sometimes they got elaborate and went to the library and studied maps to prepare.

He foregoes the path entirely, hurtling headfirst into a thicket of low-hanging branches, tall grass and wildflowers. Something scratches his cheek, and his arm, and there goes one of the loosely tied sneakers, coming off entirely when the toe snags on a root. He stops to scoop it up, gripping both laces with his teeth; it swings wildly, thudding against his chest. Pebbles in the dirt stab him through his sock.

The way he’s tearing through the underbrush can’t be sneaky, so much louder than the crickets, than the haunting hoot from an owl, and he has no plan, no idea even how long he wants to draw this out. There’s just the frantic tug in his gut ordering him to move, and his blood pumping double-time, and the burrs catching in his t-shirt and hair, and whatever comes next. Whatever instinct takes control.

A gunshot. Nearby. He needs to get _out_ of here and he finds himself leaping, slamming into a tree trunk—the sneaker hanging from his mouth whaps him punch-like in the chin; he almost bites his tongue in surprise—and wrapping his arms and legs around it and scurrying further up, into the dense foliage.

One branch is particularly sturdy, taking his full weight without swaying. He swings a leg over, sits, and pulls his other leg up and bent so he can get his shoe back on.

The laces are soggy from his mouth, and he knots them tight. Switches which leg’s pulled up and which is dangling so he can tighten the other laces too, and leans back, the trunk supporting him, and lets himself really feel, for the first time, the weight of his breath.

He forgot breathing like this, forgot how much space there is in his souped-up-by-science lungs. Each inhalation inflates a whole bouncy castle in his chest before the cool air whooshes from him strong enough to stir the leaves.

He locks his left hand around a nearby, smaller branch, and presses the heel of the right to his crotch, even though he knows he’s soft through his sweatpants. He’s aroused, sure, his skin buzzing all over, mouth stuck grinning, gut still alive and ordering him to move, just. _Move_. Ordering him to have a body. But while he ran, his blood was too busy pumping to his limbs and lungs to bother with his dick.

Now he’s free to sink into a haze of Steve the artful gunslinger, Steve so casually confident about having the upper hand, dictating inevitabilities. And in the middle of all that, telling him off for not listening to his husband, Christ, when they both know he listened to his husband _very_ well; he heard exactly what his husband was saying and acted accordingly.

He licks his lips and presses more purposefully at the front of his sweatpants, stroking, and his blood moves lower; the buzzing on his skin shifts focus, and it’s good enough for him to move his hips in a small circle, but he can’t loosen up the way he needs to, and he wonders if he’s too deep in it, if he needs to call Steve, if this is his brain taking the scenario the wrong way, but actually—

He’s clear-headed. Shockingly so. When was the last time he felt like this? Like he had blinders on, and the world was a straight line? A mission’s laid out in front of him: try to escape, but fuck up and get caught. Simple, solid parameters, with a lot of wiggle room for specifics.

He can make fun of Steve all he likes for being danger-hungry, always wanting trouble. But who’s he kidding? Steve _is_ trouble, and Bucky wants him with a hunger that terrifies him sometimes, that seems like it shouldn’t fit inside his body. It was already enormous before, so much so he genuinely feared it would burst through his skin, a hernia, and everyone would know, but then he was starved of Steve, of any love, of any good pain, for decades, and now he can’t stop binging on Steve’s stupid, sweet, mean face.

And danger, metallic-tasting at the back of his throat—He must have been hungry for that too. Maybe not in excess. This might tide him over for a long time.

His phone buzzes. Buzzes, buzzes. A call, not a text, and he takes his hand off his dick to pull the phone out, careful, because if it drops he’ll have to yell Steve’s name like they’re living in the Middle Ages. The screen says _S.R._

Cautious of drawing the murderer to his location, he cups his hand around the microphone and mutters, “Hello?”

“Hey, Buck!” There’s an echo, the voice’s original copy somewhere nearby. “Just calling to make sure you’re having a good time while I’m gone. My run turned longer than expected.”

Silent laughter bubbles in Bucky’s chest, surging up his throat, and he claps a hand over his mouth to keep it in even as his cheeks bulge and he snorts, and the instinctive inhalation through his nose, pressed to his palm, cuts off his air. He pulls his hand away. “Uh, yeah, Steve.” Residual laughter jiggles the words. “I’m having a ball. Barely miss you at all. Steve who?”

“Hurtful, Buck. And here I was gonna bring you back ice cream.”

“Oh, you ran that far? All the way to a store?”

“Supermarket, yeah. Oops.” The voice is closer now, and Bucky mouths, _Fuck_ , because he’s definitely being tracked by his own voice, which is underhanded, which is _cheating_.

“Oops,” Bucky says, “right,” craning his neck to examine the nearby trees, wondering if he should jump. “Anyway, like I said, I’m having a ball here, but I gotta go. Bye. I love you so much.”

“All right.” Steve sounds amused. “Love you.”

Bucky hangs up, tucks the phone away. A twig cracks loudly below. Bucky closes his eyes and shakes his head, grinning, and mouths, _Love you, you_ fucking _asshole._

More cracking, loud footsteps, and the murderer’s gotta be standing at the base of this tree. He’s been impeccably tracked.

“Hey, Bucky!” Bucky opens his eyes. The silence stretches. “I know you’re here! You know, we could have just had a quiet night, me killing you quickly, you being killed. But you had to go and make a whole thing out of it, didn’t you, Buck?” Crickets. His heartbeat, which slowed while he rested, ramps up again.

He could try to jump to another tree. He could drop from this one to the ground and pray he runs fast enough. Two other options are ruled out: staying up here—he can’t fuck up escaping unless he keeps a forward momentum—and dropping to the ground and handing himself over. Freely, openly, giving in and begging for some kind of lenience.

That doesn’t fall within mission parameters either.

From below, the murderer shouts, “I’m trying to be nice about this, Buck, but you’re really testing my patience. You won’t like it if I have to come up there and get you.”

Would he tuck Bucky under his arm and leap to the ground? Would he clamp his teeth around Bucky’s hand and pull, tugging him through the branches, both of them horribly banged up by the time they hit dirt?

It doesn’t matter; Bucky has to keep forward momentum. He begins untying his laces, but they’re triple-knotted, and if he takes too long, the murderer might make good on that threat and come up. He manages to painfully yank the sneaker off while still tied tight.

And he breathes deep, and doesn’t bother calculating anything when he chucks it down and in the opposite of the direction he plans to run. Staggered rustling as it lurches through the trees, and Bucky’s already swung himself to the dirt below when it lands.

He hears, “Hey, I’m not falling for that!” behind him as he heads back in the direction of the path, sliding through a patch of mud, leaping over a boulder, the man’s footsteps gaining on him, and Bucky trips himself over a fallen branch.

An arm wraps around his chest from behind, catching him. A hand rests on his stomach, more gently, as he’s pulled upright, flat to the guy’s chest.

And the guy whispers in his ear, “Got you.” Bucky whimpers, and struggles, but the big hand over the stomach claws at him, twisting his flesh painfully even through his tank top, and the arm around his chest shifts, hand wrapping around his jaw, one finger shoved into the vulnerable underside, arm threateningly tight to the side of his neck. “Shhh. No more running. You’re coming with me now, aren’t you?”

“Please.” Bucky shimmies his shoulders. His voice shoots up, shrill. “Please don’t _kill_ me. Not _killing_! Death? No thank you!”

“I told you. I didn’t come all this way for nothing.”

“Please, anything else. Just maim me a little bit, okay? I like that! I love that.”

“Yeah? You like getting maimed by people who aren’t Steve Rogers? You sure about that?”

“I’m—I don’t know. No? But. I can try. I can try to like it, okay. Anything but murder!”

The man tuts in his ear. “But murder’s my favorite. You don’t want me to have my favorite? That’s pretty selfish of you, I think.”

“Favorite what?” His voice comes back down, and he’s laughing. “Ice cream flavor? Movie?”

“Just my favorite.” Teeth close around his earlobe, pulling, and Bucky forgets to laugh, to do anything but moan and whimper, screwing his face up. “Favorite thing in the whole world, Bucky. And I want to share it with you. Now be good and come with me.”

Then he’s dragging Bucky backward, clawing at his stomach, at his chest, at his cheek, while Bucky whimpers more, twisting his head to the side. Lifting his hands to cover the hands trapping him, delicately. Just feeling how warm they are, how implacably they’re gripping him. He says, “My shoe. I want to die with my shoes on, please. Let me have _that_ much dignity. We need to find—”

“I’ve got your shoe. You want it? You’re sure?”

“Please. Let me have _something_.”

“All right. Stay very still. I’m going to move one of my arms and you aren’t going to run away. Isn’t that right?”

“You could put me on the ground. Might be easier to trust me.”

The man shakes him a little. “You saying you won’t behave on your own?”

“Might be too stupid to remember how. Please. Please pin me to the ground and give me my shoe, and then you can do whatever you want with me. Except killing. Please.”

“Not puttin’ you down in the fucking brambles. You’d like that too much, wouldn’t you, you little freak? We’re almost out. Shhh.”

Bucky tries his luck: “You’re not very intimidating for a crazed murderer.”

Bucky discovers that he is very, very lucky.

The man pauses, and tugs Bucky up to stand straight, flush to his chest. He settles his chin on Bucky’s left shoulder, digging it into the seam between metal and flesh. Enough to make him aware of the division in his body, his potential to be pieced apart.

“Stupid little bitch,” he mutters sweetly, “your options, let’s be clear, are showing me some respect and getting killed nice and nonviolent-like, or getting brained with my gun and your face shoved in the dirt while I kick you in the stomach until you’d piss blood if you ever had a chance to piss again.”

And that, it’s not _bad_ , but it’s not quite right—Bucky grunts, and shakes his head. He mutters, “Steve—”

“No, not that.” Steve kisses his neck. “Just scratch you up there, wouldn’t I?”

Bucky nods. “Yeah, mysterious murderer. That’s all.”

“No internal bleeding. Only blood I can see—” Bucky nods again, and the murderer continues, more confidently, “Because I want to see everything. But don’t think I’ll go easy on you. Scratch you, face in the dirt, hit you with my gun. It’s a hard enough gun to get through a thick skull like this one here. Really scramble up your brains, if you’ve got any. The jury’s out.”

Bucky nods, and gulps, and shivers, a cold stream up his back that splits across his shoulder blades, into his arms, shuddering. The man stays still, holding him through it, holding him where he would scratch him, hurt him, if he’s not good. Bucky lifts his arms in the air, slowly, and reaches one back to feel the gun, still holstered. If he himself were intimidating, if he were any kind of threat, no murderer would let him get away with that, with having access to a weapon. But this man lets him, allows him to cup the base and imagine it smacking his skull. Scrambling the cogs and cobwebs inside. Because he’s not a threat at all; he’s weak. Dumb. Small. Caught.

Bucky’s voice is warm when he finally says, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, you’re _very_ scary. Scariest guy I’ve ever met even. Scarier than every copy of _Terror Tales_ combined.”

“That’s right. Don’t even need a mask and chainsaw to scare you, do I? Now come _on_ , you recalcitrant piece of shit. Never murdered anyone this high-maintenance before _._ ” A forceful tug, and Bucky slips down in his grasp to be draggable, rocks sharp against his shoeless heel, twigs poking beneath the hem of his pants, scratching him.

He’s dragged onto the clear tree-lined path, and lowered to the ground, supine. The man puts one foot on his chest, pushing down, keeping him there, and Bucky blinks up at him, illuminated by the stars and moon now that fewer trees obstruct them. That’s enough for Bucky’s night vision to work from. Hat. Sunglasses. Holstered gun. A harsh jaw, and the man’s big hand pulls Bucky’s sneaker out of where it’s wedged in the back pocket of his jeans.

He sets it down on Bucky’s crotch. “There.” He smirks. Now your shoe’s on you. Ready to die?”

Bucky wants to groan at that, but the noise catches in his throat. The man is motionless above him. Waiting for an answer, and the packed dirt trail is firm beneath him. And he thinks there’s blood welling up from a nasty scratch on his cheek. Cricketsong. Starlight. All like nothing’s wrong, and he is getting hard now, beneath his own shoe, blood evenly split between there and his warm face, no blood anywhere in the rest of him. “No.” He bites his lip.

“Aw, really?”

“No. I mean yes, really, I’m not ready, okay?” and he’s taken aback by the truth of it, the edge of desperation in his voice, as the man puts more of his weight on the foot on Bucky’s chest, making it harder to breathe, and pulls the gun from the holster. “No, please, mysterious stranger, please don’t. You don’t have to do this; I didn’t do anything to deserve this. You’ll like me if you get to know me, probably, right?” He smiles, aiming for charming.

“Aw, Buck. I’ve gotten to know you plenty. I’ve touched all your clothes. I’ve been in your kitchen. I’ve watched you sob and wriggle around and mewl for Steve Rogers like you’re some kind of stupid pet he keeps.”

“I _am_ some kind of stupid pet he keeps. That’s the _point_ of me.”

“And?”

“And what? Please let me go home and cry and mewl for him, okay?”

“You forgot ‘wriggle.’ Wriggle for me right now, Buck. Go on. Show me what you are. Show me what your point is.”

“I can’t. It’s not the point if it’s for some horrible _monster_ trying to kill me in the woods. It’s for him.”

“I told you to fucking do it and you’re going to. Or did you forget what happens if you don’t respect me?” He croons, “Did you forget already?” And in a flash, he’s down with a knee on each side of Bucky’s chest, bracketing him tight, holding the gun beneath Bucky’s chin. “I can do a lot of damage with this, can’t I?’

Bucky nods to feel the barrel pushing into his flesh. “So much damage. Could really give it to me.”

“So you’re gonna squirm for me now. And maybe I’ll make this easy.”

“But you’re not _Steve_.” He says it plaintive as he can, and exaggerates his frown.

“Yeah. Are you sure about that?” With his free hand, the guy makes a finger gun, two fingers for the barrel, and slides that barrel into Bucky’s mouth. He takes the real gun away, laying it on the ground beside them. Whispers, “Bite me and you lose teeth. They’ll never identify your fucking body.”

Bucky sucks at the fingers, because that’s allowed, and because the pressure of the knees on either side of him is relaxing, makes him want to soften, open.

The guy smirks. “I know what you’re thinking. Steve Rogers would still identify you, right? He could identify you from a single finger. He could identify you from a strand of hair, huh?”

Bucky nods. Steve could find a fallen eyelash and know it was Bucky’s, and wish on it for the rest of Bucky to materialize. Probably wish hard enough to make it happen. If anyone’s wishes are horses, Steve’s are: massive ghoul-eyed muscle-bound beasts he can straddle and ride into battle.

“And you’re so sure Steve Rogers is somewhere else out there. Wondering when his sweet little pet’s gonna come home.”

Bucky nods again.

“That’s funny.” And the man above him takes off his hat, and his sunglasses, and puts them on the ground with the gun, and kisses Bucky on the cheek, and sits back up, and says, “Looks like someone’s even stupider and more trusting than I thought.”

Steve’s eyes narrow, looking at him, or were maybe always narrowed behind the sunglasses, focused. Taking him apart. He looks so fucking beautiful, and awake, and grins, proud of having tricked his dumb prey.

Bucky gasps loudly, hoping his eyes successfully bug out of his head. “But,” he sputters. “You! It’s you! Steve? All along?”

Steve swipes his tongue along his own top teeth, a wolf licking its chops, and says, “That’s right. Just me. I sent you those letters.”

“What?” And the quiet, softening fear hasn’t left, but he’s getting giddy again, and says, “Holy cow!” His hand flies up to cover his mouth. “Heavens, no!”

“That’s right.”

“And you also—You?” His next gasp’s tea-kettle-high.

“I did. I threw that brick. I wrote those things inside your clothes. I put your head in the icebox.” And it’s difficult not to interrupt him to point out that he’s stuck Bucky’s actual human head in the icebox before, with the door open, _killing the environment, Steven_ , but it’s a good moment. Bucky doesn’t want to ruin it. “You already knew I kidnapped you and brought you here.” Steve laughs. “I thought the jig was up then—But you’re so fucking stupid. You really thought that other shit was still someone else.”

Like throwing a banana peel in his own path to slip on, Bucky frowns and says, “I thought someone admired me.”

Steve’s laugh is loud and mean. “Aww!” Running his thumb up and down Bucky’s carotid, he coos, “That’s _so_ cute.” He tugs on the strands of hair that’ve come loose from their bun. “Like that could ever happen. Buck, even the dumb dogs that win top prize from the Westminster Kennel Club aren’t _admired_ by anyone. And you haven’t got anything that grand on your resume. Things like you—Well you can be loved. You can be _enjoyed_ certainly. I won’t say you’re not fun.” He pats Bucky’s cheek, and Bucky turns toward his hand, desperate to kiss the palm, but Steve won’t let him. Switches to pinning him down with that hand on his shoulder instead, and Bucky whines, pouting.

Steve pulls a face and mimics his whine. “Poor baby. I’m just sayin’. Admiring’s got connotations of respect. Admiring’s for people with any kinda dignity. That sound like you?”

“No.” Even with both his shoes on. No dignity at all. His voice is smaller than he would’ve expected. Ground-down, the momentary giddiness receding into something sturdier. He tries again, “I don’t have any dignity. Never did.”

“I know that better than anyone don’t I?” Bucky nods, hurried, ready to nod his head all the way off. “I’ve seen you as shameful as you get. Seen you all kinds of compromising positions. Seen you at your absolute lowest.”

“Steve, yeah. Yeah. Steve.”

“Stop nodding. You’re making me dizzy looking at you.” He stills. “Good fucktoy. I know you better than anyone, don’t I? Of course it was me. Who else could scare you that bad?”

“You were just trying to scare me? Oh! That’s okay, then. Let’s go home.” He tries to sit up, and Steve grabs the short hairs at his nape and pulls his head back down to the dirt.

“Oh, no.” Steve laughs. “Don’t worry, I am planning to kill you. I see things through, Bucky. But not here. I want to do it out in the open. You’re coming with me.”

“What? Steve!” He gasps again. “You can’t!” And now he squirms, tries to wriggle away, pushing at Steve, until he’s smacked across the face, hot and sudden, which makes him squirm harder, shoving his face up, asking for more, and Steve obliges, smacks him again, and again in the same place, and if he just did it a few more times the mark might last a while, but then Steve puts a hand under the back of Bucky’s skull to pull his head upward, and backhands him in the mouth.

Steve says, “You telling me to stop?”

“Fuck.” The fight drains from him. He licks his lips and tastes blood. “Fuck. No, I’m not. I’m sorry, Steve.” He tips his head back, relishing the support of the palm beneath him, how it slides down to his neck and cups him there. “I’ll be good, okay? I will. Take me wherever you want.”

“Yeah. Don’t worry. I will.” Bucky realizes his eyes are closed, and opens them, vision tear-bleary, and Steve is smiling at him. “I’m putting your shoe in your mouth, though.” He shrugs, as if in halfhearted apology.

“That’s up to you.”

“Aw. There we go.” Steve puts Bucky’s head down gently in the dirt. He swipes his fingers beneath Bucky’s eyes, where some tears have escaped. “Someone’s learning to be good. Too bad I’m killing you so soon.”

“Oh nooooo,” Bucky says. “Gosh. The tragedy.”

“Well, life is a disappointment. Now stay where I put you.” Steve stands, and plucks the sneaker up. He pauses, bent down, stroking one hand along Bucky’s dick, so Bucky’s Adam’s apple bobs and his hips flinch upward, into the sudden rush of pleasure. Steve rubs at him some more, and Bucky’s mind skips, and a thin noise leaves his throat, and he pushes his hips up with purpose now, but Steve takes his hand away.

“Mouth open.” Bucky obeys, and Steve crams the toe of the sneaker between his teeth. “Bite.”

Instantly, the intrusion and the taste of rubber and dirt make him gag. His writhing tongue attempts to evict the shoe, but he breathes deep through his nose and focuses on accepting it, and his throat calms. Steve crouches beside him, lips parted, taking in Bucky’s cartoonishly bulging stare and the shoe protruding from his face like a pelican's beak. He pushes a loose strand of hair off of Bucky’s forehead. And then slips both arms beneath him and stands, bringing Bucky with, carrying him like a bride.

Around the sneaker, Bucky makes a questioning sound, a turkey gobble, and cringes, pushing himself closer to Steve’s chest. Kicks his legs where they’re dangling to feel how helpless he is.

Steve says, “If you don’t got nothing important to say, then shut the fuck up. I wanna kill you in the grass. I want the fucking fireflies around us. Like candlelight. Real romantic.”

Bucky snorts, and then he’s gagging again, and can’t turn it off, and he’s worried he’ll actually vomit around the sneaker. He’s tearing up hard, and reaches toward his pocket where the phone is, dramatically, wanting Steve to see him reaching, and Steve snakes the hand under Bucky’s upper body around him further, the shift uncomfortable for only a second before he’s taken the sneaker out and thrown it, through the trees, toward the open field, and jostled Bucky back into place.

Bucky pants, adjusting. A hitching sob. He swallows some dirt, which is comforting. He says, “Thanks. I’m okay. I’m okay.”

Steve _mmm_ s. “Well, there goes the one bit of dignity you had, huh?” Bucky laughs weakly, and nods. “What a shame.”

“The most shame of ‘em all.”

They walk in silence, save for the crunching twigs beneath Steve’s feet, and some sniffling, from Bucky, who can’t stop now, warm and heavy and safe in Steve’s arms. A leak’s sprung in him. Steady, seeping tears.

They reach the edge of the trees, entering the grass. After a few feet, Steve sets him down, kneeling by his side. The blades of grass brushing Bucky’s skin itch, and he makes a face. Steve’s hand cups his cheek. Pushes them away.

Steve says, “I wonder what I should do with you.”

“I thought you were gonna kill me. Where’s the follow-through?”

“Changed my mind.” He’s smiling wide. With moonlight streaming unobstructed on them and a firefly glowing and dimming above Steve’s head, Bucky notices for the first time how dirt-streaked Steve’s face is. A leaf’s caught in his hair, and without thinking, Bucky plucks it free. Steve’s eyes follow his hand as he drops the leaf next to them.

Steve looks torn open. But he manages to sound steady when he says, “Last minute call.”

“I thought murder was your favorite.”

“I said that, huh?”

“Yeah, back there in the woods. ‘Murder’s my favorite.’ You said it in my ear? Remember?”

“Hmm. If I _did_ say that, which I’m not sure I did, I must have been confused. Murder’s definitely not my favorite.”

“No?”

“No, Buck.” Steve kisses him. Bites his lower lip. Sits up as Bucky’s still whimpering from the bite. And he sounds and looks reverent when he says, “Something else is my favorite.”

Bucky thinks he might crumble into dirt himself, nutrients for the grass to feed on. Billions of small pieces. He throws his left arm over his eyes. “Fucking sap.”

“The sap’s back in the trees, Buck. If you wanna go collect some.”

“That’s it. I’m leaving. That was the last straw, Rogers. Murder is one thing, but are you serious?” He makes like he’s gonna push himself up, giving Steve time to get a hand on his chest and slam him back down. Bucky doesn’t resist. Unimpressed, he stares up at Steve with his eyebrows raised. “Really, just unforgivable. The _fuck_ kind of terrible pun is that?”

“It was funny.”

“Please. I’m not encouraging you.”

“That so?” He gropes Bucky’s hard dick through his sweatpants, and Bucky keens, pushing himself down into the dirt instead of thrusting into the touch. But Steve is relentless, fondling him, rubbing over him with the heel of his palm sans any technique. Bucky’s nerves fire blindly, shooting holes through every bit of his body. The recoil’s unbalancing. He realizes his eyes are closed and opens them, and Steve, smiling, says, “This is pretty encouraging.”

“Not my fault my body’s a traitor.”

“Your body’s just better-behaved than you. More easily trained.” One last squeeze to Bucky’s dick, and he starts pinching the insides of his thighs instead, which is even better, causes him to curl upward in a hasty sit-up with the vicious bite. His dick twitches like it’s asking to be freed.

“Steve—”

“Yes?” A brutal pinch, up high near his balls, where the fabric’s worn thinner, makes Bucky howl. Not even a full moon. But he could howl louder, growl, grow claws, burst free of his skin.

“What—What are you gonna do. With me, then? If you’re not gonna murder me?”

“Impatient.” A light slap to his hip. “Maybe I haven’t decided yet.”

He grabs the waistband of Bucky’s sweatpants and pulls it away and down, stretching it, and Bucky pushes up on his elbows to get a better view. Together, they examine his exposed briefs: tented, lime green but dark where they’re damp. As if performing on command, Bucky’s dick industriously spurts out more square inchage of dark patch. His face grows hot.

Steve says, “Cute.” He lets the elastic snap against the head of Bucky’s dick, and Bucky’s breath hitches and his upper body spasms like a wet dog shaking itself dry.

He manages to say, “Okay. I’ll be patient.”

Steve forces a snort. “Why do I doubt that? All right.” He wraps one hand around Bucky’s thigh, gripping firmly. “Here’s an idea: We’ll each think of something I can do to you. And then we’ll rock paper scissors to pick. Good?”

Bucky frowns. “You want me to have an idea?”

“I know, sweetheart, I know. That’s a lot to ask of something like you. But it should be kind of funny, I think, watching you try to have a semi-worthwhile thought for once in your life.”

“I do live to entertain.”

“That’s right. That’s why I _let_ you live tonight. So you can entertain me.”

“I’ll try to do you proud, then, Steve. I need an idea right now?”

“Yep. Hit me.”

Bucky slaps Steve, feather-light, on the cheek. Steve grabs his wrist, grinding the bones together.

His voice is a jagged arrowhead. “What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?”

“What you said. I’m just obeying, Steve, geeze.”

Immediately gentler: “All right.” He kisses Bucky’s palm. “You’re right. That was an unfair order of me to give. I know how easy you get confused.” Then he tugs on the captured hand, and releases Bucky’s thigh. “Hey, sit up for me. But pull your pants and shorts down, under your ass.”

“Aye aye, sailor.” He only pulls them down in the back, legs straight out in front like he’s a doll with no articulated joints. Dirt and grass are cool and gritty, itching and damp, against his bare skin. He looks at Steve hopefully with his hands at the front of the waistband. Asking.

Steve screws his mouth up and tosses the gun from hand to hand, showy about it. “I don’t know. That’s a hard call.”

“A very. _Hard_. Call, Steve. Please?”

Steve breathes out through his nose, and twirls the gun around his finger again, and Bucky’s stomach twirls in sync. “Yeah, all right. But let me. Hands behind your back.”

Right hand grips the left wrist, side of his left hand against the exposed top of his ass, reassuring. Shuffling closer, still holding the gun, Steve sits cross-legged next to him. Facing the same direction. Pressed up close. And he slides the barrel of the gun beneath the waistband of Bucky’s briefs.

The metal’s warm from Steve’s hand. Disappearing beneath his pants, parallel to his dick, a second bulge, it registers, in his brain, as a bodily part of him. Of both of them. Their shared appendage. Hips lifting, Bucky gasps, “ _Oh_ ,” and if he weren’t bright red before, he must be now, hearing how fucking worshipful he sounds.

Steve, breathy too, says, “Yeah. Here we go,” and angles the gun so the muzzle slopes downward, barrel cradled between the prominent gracilis muscle of his thigh and the root of his dick, buried in hair. Steve presses hard, so all the inner thigh muscles instinctively flex in response, fighting him. Silently, Bucky reprimands them.

Aloud, he says, “They don’t speak for me.” His voice is just-woke-up muzzy.

“What?” A line appears between Steve’s eyebrows, and he swivels his neck to side-eye Bucky.

“Y’know. My body doesn’t. My thigh’s, you know. Pushing at you. Bad.”

Lifting an eyebrow and squinting the opposite eye, Steve pushes harder on the gun, and Bucky’s muscles continue their protest.

“Yeah,” Bucky says, “That. You know. Sorry about the recalcitrance.”

For a worrying ten seconds, Steve looks puzzled. Then high laughter kicks up from his gut and out his mouth with a spray of saliva, and Bucky’s mouth flails around his face, as dopey and fond as Steve looks when he turns more to eye Bucky straight-on.

“You fucking loser,” Steve says wonderingly, and the gun taps against Bucky’s dick—gently, but his nerves sing in anticipation of more, and he shivers—and Steve’s hand pats him on the thigh, right above his knee.

“Yeah,” Bucky gets out. “That’s me.”

No more straight-on-eyeing or side-eyeing; red ears and the back of Steve’s yellow head, flecked with dirt, as he silently uses the gun to pull Bucky’s briefs and pants away from his body, to urge them down, freeing his dick, which splashes a few drops of fluid on his stomach, then lower still, to pool around Bucky’s knees. Steve’s farmer-tanned neck stretches, knob of muscle prominent beneath his skin; he ducks down; he kisses the head of Bucky’s dick, and Bucky whines in lieu of thrusting.

He’s rewarded with another kiss, right over his slit, Steve’s tongue dipping in, exploratory, before moving on to swirling around the crown, lapping at the sensitive flesh beneath it, and Bucky’s eyes fall mostly closed, pleasure snaking up through him, loosening him even as the muscles of his ass and pelvis are clenched almost comically tight in an effort to stay still. To be good.

To be good for Steve, now setting the gun down on the top of Bucky’s thigh, spanning Bucky’s stomach with one big hand, holding him down, nails pressed to his skin but only in threat. He takes the head of Bucky’s dick into his mouth. Closed-eyed, sucking, somehow sucking the breath from Bucky’s lungs too, writhing his tongue against the underside, and Bucky’s grabbing at the grass, uprooting it, apologizing to the earth in his head, between the white noise and cursing and the thought of how pretty Steve’s excessive eyelashes are.

Steve drags his teeth up the front of Bucky’s dick, not cruel, but enough to make him squeak and barely redirect his flinch so it’s all in his head instead of his hips. If he fucks Steve’s mouth at all, this won’t end well for him. If the gun falls from his thigh, he suspects that won’t end well either.

Back to the licking, and Bucky’s warm, heavy. Rips up a whole fistful of grass and lifts his hand to smash it against his face and says, “ _Steve,_ Steve, _please._ ”

Steve freezes with his mouth a third of the way down Bucky’s dick. Looks up at him with his eyebrows raised and his eyes wide. Bucky waits for him to pull off and say something, but Steve just stares. Also waiting.

“Steve, please, it’s.” And he thinks maybe Steve would let him, right now, if he asked nicely. Would suck him off, teeth cruel this time. Would hurt him just right with his hands so Bucky could spill into his mouth and take the edge off for whatever’s next. But that would be too easy, like he was getting away with something, evaporating into the night sky, evading Steve’s clutches.

Steve tricked him; Steve chased him; Steve caught him. No getting away.

“Please don’t let me come? Please stop? Not—not yet. I’d like to wait.”

Steve rolls his eyes, shrugs, like, _Convince me._ He gives Bucky another suck, cheeks hollowing, and Bucky groans.

“Steve, _please._ Please don’t be nice to me, okay? Please make it harder. I need it—No, I. Sorry, I know what I need’s—It’s up to you, but I want it to be harder than this. Make me suffer longer, please. Please make me wait. I’ll be so fucked up about it when you finally let me. I’ll be a mess. I’ll be the worst. Please be the worst to me, please. I can take it. I’ll take it. I promise.”

Steve’s eyes are steady on him. Bucky’s face twists into something pleading. And Steve shrugs again and pulls off, a string of drool connecting his bottom lip and Bucky’s dick until he slices through it with a finger.

“Talking a pretty big game there,” he says, and Bucky’s, “Thank you,” is fragile. A china teacup veined with cracks.

“Thank you, Steve. Love you.”

“I know.” Steve’s thumb smoothes over Bucky’s eyebrow. “It’s reciprocated.”

Bucky smiles, and when Steve fully lays his hot hand against his cheek, he turns his head, nuzzling the palm, and sighs.

Steve laughs under his breath. “What are you doing here, idiot? Camouflage makeup?” And he spits on his fingers and scrubs at Bucky’s face.

“What?”

“You’re covered in _grass_. Not just dirt for once.”

“Oh. I am.”

Steve uses the hem of his own t-shirt to wipe further at the mess. “I think you wanna leave that to the professional makeup artists.”

“Yeah, who? You?”

“Sure. You find me a wall I can paint? I’ll do you up the same color. That’s a promise.”

Every room in their apartment is a standard flat eggshell white. What if the kitchen were blood orange? The living room buttery as Steve’s summer hair? And then Bucky could be made up like a Simpson to match. “All right. I’ll take that to the bank.”

“Aw.” Steve stops cleaning him. Wraps his fingers around Bucky’s ear and says gently, “They don’t _let_ fucktoys in the bank, Buck. But maybe I can sneak you in. Stick you in my suitcase. If it’s important to you.”

“Just use the sack. That’ll look real normal. Slung over your shoulder.”

“Yeah, sure. Ho ho ho.” He busses Bucky’s forehead loudly. “You were supposed to have an idea, remember? What you want me to do. That little break enough time for you to make this thing work?” He knocks on Bucky’s forehead, over the kiss.

He hadn’t been thinking about it at all, but he can still feel the gun hard against his thigh. Part of him, the same temperature and weightiness of his flesh and controlled by Steve even if Steve’s not touching it right now. So he says, “You should—No, sorry, _I want_ you to fuck me with the gun. My mouth. And then my ass? But, uh. I’d be on my back I guess. So I can see what you’re doing.”

“Yeah?” Steve waves the gun in the air between them, and Bucky gulps, wanting it in his mouth this second. “Holding your legs up in the air for me? You’ll look pretty stupid like that, we don’t take your pants off all the way.”

“Yeah, I would, wouldn’t I?” He winks. “Do I get to know your idea?”

Steve laughs. “What? No, of course not. What’d you do to earn that?”

“Nothing. But. Please? Just so I know what I’m competing with?”

“Nope, Buck, sorry. Sit up now, come on.” He gets a hand under Bucky’s shoulder, urging him up so they’re eye-to-eye, and slides that hand down to the small of Bucky’s back. Sets the gun on the ground. “What, are you scared?”

Bucky gulps. Shakes his head. “Not anymore.”

“Oh yeah? I scared you before, huh?”

“Yeah. Real bad.” He isn’t sure how much it’s a lie. But it was good fear, clean fear, like clean sweat from a sauna.

“And you kept going, huh?”

“I was scared, not—Not incapacitated. Of course I did.”

“That was pretty brave of you. So impressive.”

He whines. Twists and pushes closer so he can throw an arm around Steve’s shoulders and hide his face in Steve’s chest. “Shut _up_.”

“Hey.” Steve grabs what’s left of his bun—a good half of his hair has escaped, spiraling over his neck and out from behind his ears—and yanks, forcing him to bare his throat. His arm slips off Steve’s shoulders, hand hitting the dirt with a _thwap_. Steve’s eyebrows are high. “I don’t mind you being ungrateful, but just ’cause you don’t gotta be afraid of me doesn’t mean I’m not in charge. Do you tell me to shut up?”

When Bucky doesn’t answer fast enough, Steve yanks on the bun again. His whole scalp burns, and his hips jump and he gasps and says, “No. I’m sorry. Sorry, Steve. You’re in charge. I promise.”

“I know that. I just want to make sure you do. That part’s for real, right?”

“You know it is. I know it is. Can—May I kiss you? Steve.”

“Yeah, you wanna kiss the mouth that was just on your dick?”

Affectless, Bucky says, “Oh no. My gosh. The scandal. My husband? A cocksucker. I’m disgusted. I can’t get past this. I can never kiss him again. My word. In my own home. What will the townspeople—”

Steve kisses him, kinda. His mouth’s stretched into a grin, but he shoves it against Bucky’s mouth all the same, shutting him up, and Bucky takes responsibility for this being an actual, bona fide kiss. Hair still trapped in Steve’s hand, he can’t move without hurting himself, reigniting the burn in his scalp when he plants an obnoxiously loud kiss on Steve’s teeth, and another at the corner of his mouth. He slips his tongue beneath Steve’s upper lip, sliding it around under there until Steve breaks, laughs a little, mutters, “Fuck,” and kisses him for real. Necks with him. Spit-heavy and loud and with their teeth knocking together an undignified amount, until he moves on to Bucky’s throat, using his grip on the bun to tug Bucky’s head to the side, so he can latch on and suck a bruise while Bucky whines mindlessly, squirming, his shoulder knocking into Steve’s chest.

He thrusts his neck up more into Steve’s mouth, wanting to go deeper, for more of Steve’s mouth to have him. Cries out in one high carrying note, and regrets deciding not to come, which means not coming was definitely the right choice. Steve pulls off the bruise and drags his nail down the center, harsh, like turning on the lights after painting for so long that the room grew dark around him. The scratch illuminates the pain. Puts it on display, floaty in Bucky’s brain. He’s only dimly aware that his stomach’s wet with his own pre-ejaculate. That his balls are tighter and more aching than he’d like.

But then Steve’s running soothing circles over the hickey with his thumb, employing the useful bun-handle to right Bucky’s head. And he says, “How you doing there?”

“I’m peachy. What d’you think?”

Steve smiles, biting his own bottom lip hard enough it looks like it should split. Pokes at the bruise one last time and then puts his hands on his hips and ducks his head. An obvious attempt at imposing. It works. “I _think_. That we’re gonna rock paper scissor now, Buck. You got that? Come on, gimme your fist. Nope, the other one.”

“Knew it.” Bucky holds his left fist ready in the air between them. Runs his right fingers over the hickey, pressing hard enough to turn more lights on in his brain. “It telegraphs. You’re taking advantage of me.”

“Aw, no. I’d never do a thing like that. Now come on, stop stalling. Say it.”

He stares intently at the sharp points of Steve’s knuckles. “Rock. Paper. Scissors. Shoot.” He keeps his fist locked up tight. The paper of Steve’s flat hand consumes it.

Steve sighs. The sideways tug at the corner of his mouth is pitying. His pointer and middle fingers spread apart to cradle Bucky’s wrist between them. The same as how a tarantula might hug him with its legs. “You’re no good at _anything_ , are you?”

“Yeah, well. I’ll try to be good at whatever you’re gonna do to me now. But I can’t make any promises.” He smiles, lopsided, at Steve. “It being a surprise and all.”

Steve kisses the corner of his mouth. The tip of his nose.

Bucky closes his eyes, asking, and gets what he wants, Steve kissing each of his eyelids in turn too. When he opens his eyes, Steve’s mouth is close, his breath hot and smelling like a strawberry-chocolate protein bar. There’s reddish stubble beneath his nose, one missed spot when he shaved today, and his pupils are blown wide. “On your front,” he says. “Now.” And Bucky’s already hurrying to obey, flopping forward, when Steve adds, “And then you gimme your hands.”

Chin, chest, and dick all mashed into the ground, he brings his arms behind his back, crossing the wrists, hovering them in the air as an offering to Steve instead of letting them rest on his spine.

Steve makes a pleased sound, and wraps a hand around both wrists. “I’d reprimand you for guessing _again_ that this was what I wanted. But you’re right this time.”

“Yeah? No reason not to reprimand me anyway.” He turns his face to the side, cheek flat on the ground. “It _was_ presumptuous.”

“That’s true. I guess I’d better berate my stopped clock 24/7. Niceties twice a day be damned.”

“Yeah, don’t let me fool you into going’ easy on me.”

“All right.” Steve lowers Bucky’s crossed wrists to the small of his back. Squeezes before letting go. And if Bucky were an X-Man, he’d like the power to spontaneously superglue bits of himself to other bits to ensure they couldn’t move from that exact spot until Steve worked the glue away with hot water and nail polish remover.

Maybe X-Man Steve shoots nail polish remover from his fingertips. What a written-in-the-stars romance that would be.

He settles for holding very still. Steve puts a hand on each side of his ass, massaging, just short of roughly, and says, proper and stern, “That was very fuckin’ presumptuous of you, you useless fucking hideous stopped clock.”

And he smacks both hands down at once, sharp and stinging, and Bucky says, “Mmm.”

“No.” He spanks him again, harder, low down on the right, getting his thigh too. “Say, ‘I’m sorry.’” Another hit, ending with his nails digging in.

“Right, yeah. I am. I’m sorry.”

“I’d hope so. Now.” He rubs the spot he last smacked, a comforting warmth, and Bucky lets the breath out of his body, hoping he’ll get hit again. But Steve pinches him instead, in the sensitive place where his thigh and ass would crease together if he weren’t spread out flat, and toward the inside of his thigh. Pinches, pulls, and holds the tiniest fraction of Bucky’s flesh, doing nothing else. A hot sharp spike driving through the skin, so the muscles in his thighs and ass quiver, trying to buck Steve’s fingers off. The sharp spike expands until his whole body’s skewered on its length, all of him pierced and flaring with insistent heat, his feet scrambling at the ground and legs squirming.

Arms behind his back, he’s a dying fish on a dock. Arms wriggling to shake the pain off, small whimpers dripping from his mouth. With every movement, his hips rock; his dick is shoved back and forward against the ground, strange and too much, and then Steve puts more pressure into the pinch, really focusing on making that single part hurt. That unimportant comma-sized piece of him, and Bucky shouts, writhes harder as Steve twists his flesh.

“Fuck! Fuck, Steve!”

“Yes?” Steve says mildly. His fingers hold the flesh twisted up, and Bucky yelps, a spasm wracking him from ass to shoulders. “That good?”

“Yes! Obviously! Fuck!”

Steve laughs and lets go. It makes Bucky feel crazy, how fast the pain subsides. That one spot smarts, but nothing else. All the other pain was special effects. CGI. Can be wiped away in a second. He breathes deep. Steve pets his back, to the right of his crossed wrists.

“That was a really cute dance you were doing, Buck. Beached whale ballet?”

“Beached whale tango. The ballet’s really somethin’ else.”

“Oh, tango. It was nice. Can I get an encore?”

“You’re the puppet master. I’m just the piece of ass for you to beat on.”

“Aw, you really need my help?” Now he strokes where he was pinching him, and the skin there jumps, sensitized. “I don’t think you do. I wanna see you try on your own.” He pats that spot, condescendingly kid-gloved. “Go on. I want to watch you dance, Buck. I’m a paying audience member.”

“What’d you pay to end up here?”

“The rural marine mammal theater? Well, I bought a gun. And a hat and some sunglasses. That should get me at least one dance like you were doing.”

“Yeah, okay, okay. You paid more than enough. I’m doing it.”

“Good.” His tone is light. “I’d hate to have to make _you_ pay instead.”

Involuntary, Bucky says, “ _Oh_ ,” and Steve mocks him, “Yeah, ‘oh.’ Well said.”

Squirming on purpose is a relief, an outlet for his buzzing nerves, even as he feels stupid for it. Like how when people on the television dance to loud music, they’re really dancing to silence. Music in their heads if any at all, and if you pay attention, you can tell that they’re off-beat. Unnatural.

He shimmies his shoulders, rocks his hips side-to-side. Clenches and opens his hands. A goofy series of stretches, unleashing all the pent-up everything in him. Opening his insides.

“This is pathetic,” Steve says, and smacks him on the ass, three times in a row. It stings, and Bucky jumps and yelps. Wriggles harder, lifting his chest off the ground and acting like he’s trying to get his knees up under him. “Really? That’s the best you can do? I paid to see a show here.”

“Sorry, Steve. Sorry. I’m trying.” And he closes his eyes.

Self-control falls out of him. It’s not a part he’s got anymore, and he’s writhing, thrashing with no catalyst except needing to. Needing to for Steve. It’s no different from running to the point of exhaustion. Dancing to the point of exhaustion. Wringing orgasm after orgasm out of himself while Steve watches and leaves stinging red scratch marks all over his face, saying flatly, “You don’t _want_ to go to the glue factory, do you? Don’t make me do something you’ll regret.”

No reason it should be any different, at least. He whines, a sustained mosquito-high hungry noise, moving without thought, yanking his muscles around, and he might pull something, might need to be massaged back into functionality later. Might ask Steve to rub IcyHot over his skin, and then slick his hole up with balm too, not even for fucking. The cold burn’s a comfort sometimes. Helps him sleep, with how it seeps the fight from him. Slackens his muscles.

Off-screen, Steve’s laughing. Choking and giggling. Entertained out of his mind.

Bucky’s got no concept of what he’s doing with his body parts anymore. No internal choreography notes, just knows that he’s tired and turned on and the ground is rubbing him red and raw and his hair’s sweaty and tangling and he’s swimming in the confused heady swamp that always hits him mid-orgasm, but without the accompanying pleasure-rush.

Until Steve says, “Stop. Stay still.” So sudden and firm that Bucky feels slapped. He freezes. Self-control slots back into him. There’s a long enough pause before Steve’s next words that Bucky begins processing what he was just doing. How he must have looked, flailing like that without a hand on him. Clumsy and ugly. A poorly trained circus animal.

He wants desperately to take it back, stuff the past couple minutes into his mouth to hide them. But he can’t. Steve saw. Steve remembers. Steve’s probably cherishing the sight, tucked into his cheek to suck for days. And Bucky’s breath is heavier because of that. His hips twitch, and his dick twitches too with the movement, and Steve wraps a hand around his left bicep.

“I thought,” Steve says, “I just told you to stay still. Did I tell you to stay still?” His grip is tight. Would be bruising on the other arm.

“Yeah, you. You did. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to.”

“Aw.” He tuts, and his other hand palms Bucky’s ass. Squeezes one cheek, thumb slipping into the crease between them. “Yeah, you can’t help it, huh? Dumb little slut. So hot for it you can’t think straight? Can’t behave without someone’s help?”

“Your help, Steve, yeah.”

“I mean.” He switches from a squeeze to a quick pinch. Bucky squeaks, and Steve moves so instead he’s got his hands around both of Bucky’s biceps, exerting pressure, pinning him, knees on either side of Bucky’s hips. “That goes without saying. Not ’cause I think you _know_ I’d have to teach you a pretty mean lesson, you let anyone else use you. Though I hope you know.”

“I do. I know. You’d—You’d have to be real harsh with me. I know, and I wouldn’t ever do th—”

“Shush.” He bites the back of Bucky’s neck in gentle reprimand. “Be good and let me talk. That’s not why. Thing is, no one else but me would ever be willing. No one but me can stand to be this close to you. No one but me’s got the patience for you—Something this stupid and needy requires a lot of attention to care for. It’s not a job for everyone. You got me?”

“I’ve got you. I have. And you’ve got me. We’re had. Can you, um.”

“What?”

He isn’t sure. He felt a need, and so he started asking, but his brain isn’t working at the same speed as his mouth. He rolls his shoulders, and there. That’s it. “My wrists? Can you hold me down by those?”

“You need me to or just want me to?”

“Want. You don’t gotta.”

“Wow I don’t _gotta_? Really? Wow, that’s awful generous of you, Buck. No, since you whined, I’m thinking I won’t hold you down at all. How’s that?”

“Bad.”

“Good.” But he kisses each of Bucky’s wrists, over the pulses. “You’ll have to keep yourself where you are. No running away from me. That right?”

“No slithering away either? No hopping in a hot air balloon and getting away?”

“I assumed that went without saying, but yeah. The, uh. Zoning laws. Don’t allow for hot air balloons in the air space.”

“You did a lot of research on this.”

“It pays to be thorough.” He puts his hands on each of Bucky’s hips, clamping. Aches form deep in the bone. “Let me move you,” he mutters, and Bucky forces himself garden-hose-limp.

Steve pushes him forward in the grass so his dick scrapes along the ground, then tugs him back. Repeats the motion, like Bucky’s a sponge he’s using to scrub a frying pan clean. Faster this time, back and forth, and Bucky finds himself keening, crying, desperate to abandon the limp act and writhe, brain and body pumped full of noise. But he stays a squishy sponge for Steve’s ministrations, until Steve stops, and removes his hands from Bucky’s hips.

In a tone like he’s asking if Bucky liked the omelets he cooked them for dinner, he says, “Now, I’m betting you don’t much like the grass against your poor cock, now do you?”

Bucky shakes his head. Then rushes to add a belated, “No.” He could bear it, but. The grass is both too slimy and too rough, and more importantly, there’s too much. Too many individual moving pieces; his ass flattened them into homogeny fine, but his junk hasn’t got that kind of square footage or weight to throw around, and he scrunches his face up as Steve nudges with one hand at his hips so he’ll rut against the ground anyway. “ _Steve._ ”

“ _Bucky_ , actually. You can’t blame me for this one. You begged to have your dick out, didn’t you? It’s a predicament of your own making.” And Steve’s hand grabs his thigh, tugging just enough to drag his dick back along the grass. The pure friction of it zips up his middle and sparks in his brain but the sensory details make him shudder.

“Ugh. Please, I’m sorry, okay. Can you put it away? I was wrong, okay? Please?”

“Of course you were wrong. When aren’t you? But it’s not me you gotta apologize to. Is it? It doesn’t hurt me at all if you have a lousy time down there squirming in the grass. So say a proper apology and I’ll give you what you want.”

“I’m.” This would be easier if his hands were free, if he could pillow his arms beneath his head and try to shove his eyes straight into them, or his forearms straight into his eye sockets. Either way, he’d be a little more fused together and a little more hidden from how stupid he’ll sound. “ _Steve_.”

“Uh-uh. This is your last chance. Apologize properly or you’re not gonna have much fun getting off.”

“Okay. Okay, okay.” At least he can try to force his eyes into the dirt, or the ground into his eye sockets, grass smushed beneath his forehead, except—

“Head turned to the side, Buck. Just ‘cause you’re not talking to me doesn’t mean I don’t need to hear you clearly.”

At least he’s allowed to keep his eyes closed. A scattering of pebbles digs into his cheek. “Okay,” he says. “I’m. Sorry. Bucky.” That won’t be sufficient. Steve knows he already knows it won’t be sufficient. In the pause between sentences, Steve’s hands move to his feet, forcing the tops of them flat to the ground. He hadn’t even realized he was putting his weight on the balls of his feet. Ready to spring up and run. Now he can sink into the ground all the way. “I’m really sorry, Bucky. For making you take your dick out just to rub against the grass. I’m sorry I did that to you. It was dumb of me.”

Steve strokes his hair, a big chunk of it that’s fallen from the bun, splayed across his cheek, trailing through the grass. He tucks it behind Bucky’s ear. “That’s right. And, Bucky?”

“Yeah?”

“Do you forgive Bucky?”

He snorts, and feels ungainly for it. Steve is doing such a good job taking this seriously, even though it practically sounds like he’s saying marriage vows to himself. “Yeah, yeah. I forgive you. Bucky.” The last word is mostly a huff of air. But that’s enough for Steve.

“There we go. Then yeah, all right. You can put your poor fragile dick away. Oh, but don’t forget about these.” Laughter’s back in his voice.

His hand pushes between Bucky’s thighs, parting them, and Bucky obediently spreads as far as he can with his sweatpants and briefs around his knees, giving Steve access to grab his balls, tugging at one, rolling it in his fingers, and Bucky’s mouth springs open into an _Oh._ Electric _niceness_ climbs up his spine, needle-thin and leisurely, while Steve stops stroking his hair, backing up. He licks at Bucky’s perineum, and then flicks him there, and Bucky’s broken out of a spell, gasping, a bucket of too-real heat splashed all over him.

The concept of asking to come dances back onto the horizon, and he wards that off by saying, “Jesus fucking Christ, Steve, those too. Okay? I won’t forget about those.”

Before he’s done talking, Steve’s already letting him be, helpfully pulling his pants up so they’re just beneath his ass, then snaking his arms under Bucky’s hips to pull them all the way up in the front. Tucking his entire genital situation away, safe from how grabby Steve’s clearly feeling tonight.

Bucky mumbles, “Thank you,” knocking his own forehead against the ground, eyes shut, before facing the world again. Facing the Steve, and the night sky, enormous above them. Steve pats him on the ass. Friendly.

“Now. Not to torture you more—” Bucky laughs, and Steve does too—“but you’re not getting fucked up your ass at all tonight, sorry.”

“That’s okay.”

“Aw. Such manners. It’s just that that’s a lot of work for me. Makes my hands kinda too busy for having you properly at my mercy.” He scratches two slow searing lines down the middle of Bucky’s back, and Bucky gasps, rubbing off on the ground through the fabric of his sweatpants. A significant improvement over recent circumstances.

“Not if you use the g—”

“See, about that, and _don’t_ interrupt—” One harsh scratch perpendicular across the first two— “is it seems pretty risky. Not ’cause you might get hurt. But big ugly cyborg assassin with a gun in its ass? Now _that’s_ a Terror Tale. That’s the kind of body mod that keeps people up at night.”

“You callin’ me scary, Rogers?”

“Callin’ you a living nightmare, but I don’t mean it in a nice way, and don’t. Fucking. Interrupt.” He punctuates each word by clawing at one side of Bucky’s ass with all five fingers, switching angles so the lines intersect. The skin there’s hot, stinging in a way that leaps in and out of his nerves, acrobatic, setting all of him on edge.

“Thought you were done talking.”

“Sure you did,” and Steve scratches him twice more in the same spot and Bucky keens, rolls his hips, weakly says, “Thank you,” and Steve kisses the scratches, opens his mouth and scrapes his teeth over them so Bucky full-body twitches like he’s been shocked. Steve says, mouth still close to Bucky’s ass, breath warm, “Maybe you do need to be held down. I so much as look at you funny and you’re writhing everywhere. Making me fucking dizzy.”

“I can try to hold still, Steve. I’ll try.”

“Nah.” And Steve drapes himself over him. Blankets him so the hands crossed at the small of Bucky’s back are trapped against Steve’s stomach. Now there’s no chance that Bucky might blow away. Now all his wrinkles will be smoothed out.

In his ear, Steve makes a deep revving sound with his mouth, and Bucky laughs. “That a truck or a chainsaw?”

“Obviously a chainsaw, dumbass. I’m not killing you with a truck.”

“I thought you weren’t killing me period.”

To answer, Steve makes the noise again.

“Ahhhh!” Bucky says, giggling. “Please, no! Please, have mercy!”

The revving turns to growling, and Steve bites the back of his neck. Bucky’s giggling is swallowed in a gasp, a low and choked wail.

“Y’know what, Buck? I’m feeling generous.” He pulls Bucky’s head back, so he can see the gun waving in front of his face. “I think I’ll let you have this after all. How’s that, dear?”

“Please. Yes, please, Steve.” And Bucky strains forward to kiss the gun. Steve is the sweetest; Steve moves it closer so he can. He smooches the barrel. Licks up its length. It tastes like keys, like a doorknob, like biting down on his own fingers to stifle his cries. “Thanks.”

Steve pulls the gun away. “You’ll need to turn over then. Come on. Move.”

He climbs off of Bucky and slaps him upside the head as he lets his hair go. Smacks his ass when he doesn’t move fast enough. The loud crack of his hand against bare skin seems paradoxically more indiscreet out here with no one around than it ever does at home, and as he rolls over, Bucky squirms with the imaginary scandal of it. Fully supine, he tips his head back and fans his arms out further, exposing himself to whatever aliens are watching from lightyears away through high-powered telescopes. To whatever spying robot camera birds might fly overhead. To any ghosts.

And to Steve, who says, “Well, look at you,” kneeling by his shoulder, setting the gun flat on Bucky’s chest.

“Can’t very well,” Bucky rasps, but strains his head upward to try, butting his chin against the gun’s backstrap in the process.

Most of him knows that Steve will have taken the bullets out, if there were any bullets in there to begin with. Taken out the blanks; whichever. But he allows himself one smoke plume of paranoia, curling and wispy in his chest, rising up the back of his neck. Causing every muscle he’s got to clench. His head to swim, his body hair to rise on end when the gun slides into his mouth, easy as a hand into a mitten, with his lips covering his teeth.

He holds his eyes wide and his tongue flat. Waiting for the moment the gun bumps the back of his throat and he has to suppress his gag reflex. But Steve teases him, falling short. Fucking the gun into him with shallow thrusts like this is the very first thing he’s ever shoved in Bucky’s mouth and he needs to be careful. He needs to grope slowly toward finding the limits of what Bucky will take.

The first time Bucky ever got his face fucked, it was with Steve’s fingers, and that had the same tentatively explorative flavor as if Steve had woken up on Mars and suspected he was kidnapped by Martians for malevolent purposes but couldn’t prove anything yet and had to go on a fact-finding mission.

The first time he got his throat fucked properly, to the point of tears and snot and drool, it was with the wooden spoon Steve had been stirring their simmering soup with moments before. Bucky salted the broth and then got on his knees in front of Steve, who leaned against the stove with his hip cocked and said, “Yeah, what does my dumb slut want?” His dark eyes and the way he held his jaw betrayed how big a deal it was to him, just saying those words, and Bucky, overcome by Steve being overcome, could only ask by slipping two fingers into his own mouth while holding eye contact.

Steve rapped his knuckles with the spoon and yanked Bucky’s hand free of his mouth by the wrist. He said, “Use your words,” and Bucky did until Steve took pity and saw to it that Bucky couldn’t use any words at all.

Bucky moans, and Steve says, “Impatient.” He pulls the gun out most of the way, using the tip of the barrel to drag down Bucky’s lower lip, exposing its slick inside. Resting the barrel on Bucky’s lower teeth so it’s aimed right for the roof of his mouth, and the plume of paranoia sets off a screeching smoke alarm in his brain. He should be fighting, scrambling away, protecting his fragile body, so human, so practically built out of matchsticks and gasoline.

But he holds still for Steve to examine him. For Steve to press a thumb to that wet flesh, alongside the barrel, and say conversationally, “You know people get tattoos here?”

That throws a muffling blanket over the fire alarm. Bucky feels like flesh and muscle again, less like kindling. A different understanding of what it means to be human. Words intelligible but carved into awkward shapes by the obstruction in his mouth, he says, “They don’t last very long.”

“Mm. It’s true. And even less long on you, I bet. But that just means we can try a bunch. Rotate through ’em. What do you think? ‘Fuckpoodle?’ ‘Toxic sex toy?’ My email address? Like on a collar tag?”

“Fuck, _yes_ . Please. A, B, C, all of the above. _Steve._ ”

“‘Please contact if found’ might be too long, but I think people’ll know what the email means. They’ll know how it means they should handle you.”

“They’ll know I’ve got all my shots.” Steve laughs, raising and lowering the gun a little to _click_ against Bucky’s teeth, and Bucky adds, “That _wasn’t_ a pun. I’m dumb, but not that dumb.”

“It was if I say it was. You’re that dumb if I say you are.” He eases the gun back fully into Bucky’s mouth. Shutting him up. “We’ll do that. Ear piercing first, I think, but then. But right now—” He licks his lips, staring in fascination at the gun disappearing into Bucky. Easing further in than before, so Bucky’s wide eyes do threaten a sprung leak.

Steve clears his throat. “Right now, we’re a little busy.”

Bucky moans in agreement, and Steve says, “God. No, I need. Fuck. Stay still, or. No. Lift your legs for me, sweetheart. To your chest. No hands, but as bent in half for me as you can get.”

That’s pretty bent in half, the stretch in the back of his thighs putting pressure on his groin so his dick throbs and his eyelids laze half-shut. His bare ass is in the air, exposed for no functional purpose. His hole twitches in response to a cool breeze, and his dick twitches in turn.

Steve says, “Close enough, I guess,” and “All right,” and, like it’s the highest compliment he’s ever paid anyone, “I knew you’d look so stupid like this,” and maneuvers himself to kneel between Bucky’s legs. Grabs one of Bucky’s ankles with the hand that isn’t holding the gun very still inside his mouth. And he drapes that leg over his own shoulder.

At first, they’re positioned so the knee sits on his shoulder without bending, calf aimed straight up like the shot that signals a marathon’s start, toes pointed. But Steve lowers himself, slithering forward, until Bucky’s knee bends and his heel bounces against Steve’s spine. Looming above him, Steve’s face is intent, eyebrows scrunched and nostrils flaring. He palms Bucky’s ass to push it higher in the air. Exposing his hole more even though no one’s gonna touch him there. Even though Steve hasn’t even got a good view of him there now.

A sharp elbow to the inside of the leg still folded to Bucky’s chest, jabbing at the knee, spreads him open. Forces that thigh to lie perpendicular to Bucky’s torso, flat to the dirt. He wasn’t this flexible when he was young and wiry and spent weekends dancing and boxing, jumping rope and swimming to cross-train. Now he’s ancient and all of his exercise comes from walking or the occasional bike ride. But he’s become one of those flowers that unfurls when submerged in hot water. A tea party trick. Watch him bloom, surrounded by plates of watercress sandwiches.

Gravity suctions him to the earth. Holds him down by the hair, hooks into his skin. His wrists, his ears, his jaw—they all feel weighted. Fucking his mouth with a gun’s no different than if Steve dug a hole and fucked the gun into that.

Except that Bucky can suck, hollowing his cheeks, can work his tongue on the barrel. He can even lift his head a minute amount, fighting gravity’s pull, to take more. His eyes fall shut with the simple rhythm of the in and out, but he forces them open, wanting to see Steve’s eyes transfixed on his mouth. The heat in them.

Thoughtless, Bucky’s rocking his hips, and the muscles of his ass and thighs contract and relax incessantly. Steve must be able to feel the leg thrown over his shoulder trembling like a branch in the wind. He must be able to feel the quaking muscle through the fat where he’s still grabbing Bucky’s ass.

Bucky’s dick is dribbling wetness, neediness, poking its head out from the waistband of the sweatpants just enough that if it were a soldier in a firefight, it would’ve been shot by now. The tiny motions of his hips rub the head against his stomach’s buttery skin. So many stars glitter behind Steve’s head.

Steve says, “Suck it like a nice boy, Buck. Like a very good boy who’s been trained up right. Trained you to take whatever I give you, huh?” Not wanting to jostle the gun by nodding, Bucky sucks harder, bobs his head faster, and that’s sufficient, because Steve says, “That’s right. I can give you anything, and you’ll take it. Everything. God, you have no idea, do you? How bad I want to give you everything I’ve got.”

But how could Bucky not know? When he’s laid out like this in the dirt, in the moonlight, horny and hurting. When he just got _hunted down_ , and now he’s having his throat fucked—finally, finally as Steve changes the angle, slides the gun where it belongs, challenging him not to gag too hard—by the hunting weapon. Meaning the gun, but also meaning Steve. Steve, who’s always been the best at looking for him, at finding him, at scaring the living shit out of him, at taking him apart.

How could Bucky not know, when he wants so bad to give Steve everything right back? The dirt, the moonlight, himself offered up, full access to his mouth, his throat, every soft or scarred inch of his skin like Steve’s paying for a subscription. Like Steve’s the only person in the universe allowed to pay for that subscription and everyone else gets a computer virus and their bank account emptied when they try to enter their card information.

Reverent, Steve says, “What an ugly, stupid fucktoy I have. Dumbest little slut I’ve ever met in my life. So trusting. So easy. Right? Huh? _Right_?” Bucky moans. Nods hardly at all, and still his throat spasms for a few wild seconds, spit flooding his mouth before he calms. Steve smiles and takes his hand off Bucky’s ass. He pushes Bucky’s shirt up to under his armpits. Tweaks a nipple, pets his stomach. Says, “Rub yourself through your pants for me, Buck. Get yourself off to me doing what I like to you.”

Careful to stick to the letter of the law, Bucky adjusts the waistband of his sweats, covering his exposed cockhead back up. Then he squeezes his dick through the cloth. Orienting himself before getting to work, rubbing the heavy hard heel of his left palm up and down, trusting that hand to do what he tells it.

Steve’s nails rake across his stomach, dragging over his rib cage, toward the dirt, and then up. One catches his nipple, jolting him. His chest rises, seeking more, and Steve gives him more, nails scraping over his nipple again, again, before pinching him there, pulling and twisting. Bucky hasn’t got to move the hand on his dick because his hips and legs are moving plenty. The foot of his bent leg flops around as if animated by electricity. His other leg drums on Steve’s back, and he’s rutting helplessly against his hand, against his wrist. There’s a painless moment like a cloud passing over the sun, but then Steve’s nails find his other nipple and twist, pull it away from his body, and he spreads his hand wide over the stretched expanse of fabric between his legs and presses down to find and fondle his heavy balls. Tugging at them.

Steve’s nails draw slow searing red lines down him from the base of his neck to his navel, and Bucky’s making frantic noises around the gun, not knowing what they mean. A pack of high whines, a whole murder of lowing moans. Tears trickle down his face into the dirt, leaving tracks that dry and make his skin feel tight. Above his head, his right hand balls into a fist hard enough that his arm quivers.

Steve asks him, “You want me to take this out?” and Bucky shakes his head, bumping his insides against the gun in the process so his throat seizes and his head lurches up like a dolphin breaking the ocean’s surface. The whines all lurch up too, shouldn’t be audible to anyone but dogs and supersoldiers and supersoldiers who are kind of sometimes jokingly but earnestly dogs for each other, and Steve frowns and slides the gun out, pushing Bucky’s head down, back under the ocean’s surface with a hand splayed over his forehead.

Saying, “Steve, I shook my head,” both sounds and feels like cleaning off a sand-encrusted fossil with dental tools. Or how he always imagined that would be, back when he was a little kid who dreamed about discovering a new kind of dinosaur, or a teenager who more realistically thought it might be neat to unearth an ancient tiger’s buried saber teeth. And a loud sob wells up in the middle of, “I said no. You can put it back,” breaking his voice.

Lifting from Bucky’s forehead, Steve’s palm cracks down hard on his cheek. The slap burns and turns his head. This is real crying now. The good stuff. Free-flowing. He sniffles, and Steve grabs his chin, straightening his head out.

“I know I can. But I wanna hear you talk. Don’t question my decision.” He’s abandoned the gun in the dirt nearby.

“Sorry. Won’t question you again. Promise. I’m. I’ll listen. Fuck. Fuck.” Tears blur his vision, and the hand still above his head comes down to hide his face without him thinking. But Steve catches him around the wrist and puts his hand back in its place.

Gentle, he says, “You know not to do that.” And he uses his knuckles to wipe tears out of Bucky’s eyes for him. Ducks in close and licks more tears off his cheeks.

Bucky says, “Thanks, honey.”

The licking ends with a kiss to the delicate skin beneath his eye. “Any time.” Steve sits up. He taps the back of Bucky’s left hand, where it rests on top of his covered erection. Not moving. “You forget something?”

“Fuck. Yeah, sorry. Sorry.” The reprieve only seems to have made him more sensitive. He keens at the first slow stroke along his dick. “I want to get off to you doing me. I do.”

“Doing what I like to you.”

“Yeah, I was abbreviating. I’m—fuck—efficient. An innovator. Please, Steve. Please. Whatever you want to do.”

“Yeah, Buck, yeah,” he says, and claws at Bucky’s stomach, at his hips in a quick frenzy like he’s a cat and Bucky’s a couch, and over his abused nipples. Without the gun in his mouth, Bucky’s got more freedom to writhe. He flails with every touch, more violently when Steve’s nails drag over bone instead of something soft. He’s afraid his heel will jackhammer a hole through Steve’s spine.

For one moment, his left hand dips too low, brushing the skin of his own ass, and he says, “Sorry, sorry,” and jerks his hand away, strokes his dick so achingly slow he cries out, and when Steve says, “For what?” he says, “Fuck—I’m—You didn’t say not to, I guess—I, my ass? Steve?” and Steve says, “No fucking clue what you just said, but this good?” and puts a hand on each of Bucky’s ass cheeks and spreads them apart, and gets his nails in deep, and gazes wonderingly at Bucky, at Bucky’s rocking hips, his fluttering hole, at the marks Steve’s leaving with his nails all over, fiery and zinging, and Steve pushes his way under Bucky’s sweatpants to get the backs of his thighs too, to wake up every inch of skin he can.

And Bucky tugs at his balls, strokes his dick more urgently, roughly, feeling it jerk and drool. It’s almost too much, and then it is too much, and then it’s happening: his body’s giving up everything it’s got in long spurts, in an earthquaking of his muscles, and it feels like holding his hand to a flame.

So fever-hot he should be glowing, he sweats behind the ears and in the crooks of his knees. His back arches, undulates, his shoulders rotating. Inside him: a taffy pull, pleasure sticky-smooth and tugged mechanically from his core, aerating, bubbling, _oh fucking god._ All that bright chewy contentment oozes into his skull and folds up to smother any ugly grey matter until he’s got no brain to worry about. This is what he’s meant to be, something simple, crafted by Steve. For Steve to savor.

It ebbs, like always, reality re-entering. He clutches it as long as he can as though hanging from a windowsill by his fingertips, focusing on the hungry, violent, breathlessness of Steve’s narrowed eyes and open mouth. Replaying Steve looking at him that way while scoring lines into his flesh with his nails. Steve dragging him out of the woods. Steve twirling the gun.

He reaches up to press hard at some of the lingering lines himself, and Steve gets the picture and takes the reigns, scratching back over them with one hand while he squeezes Bucky’s scratched-up stinging ass with the other, and Bucky keens, curling onto his side. White light flares through him one last time, brilliant, before receding. Leaving him warm and worn and still and panting. Steve’s nails make him kick out weakly like his knee’s been hammered, and Steve laughs under his breath.

“Cute little fuckslut,” he says. “There you go. You’re all right, Buck. You’re good. Jesus, you’re great. You—You come the closest to meeting expectations of anyone I know. You know that? Fuck, you’re wrecked.”

Bucky whines, “I _know_ ,” and Steve laughs again and carefully rearranges Bucky’s legs so they’re both on the ground, stretched out straight, spread wide around a still-kneeling Steve, who puts his hand over Bucky’s crotch. Squeezing at his soft and sensitive dick.

Bucky whimpers and flinches away, hiding his face in his shoulder. “ _Steve._ ”

Steve says, “Yes or no?” and Bucky sniffs and says, “Yes. Yes, if you want to, yeah, fuck, _Steve_ ,” as Steve gropes him some more. Bucky feels like a ring of keys, all slid together and jangling, jagged-edged. Stuck one-by-one into the wrong lock, vice-gripped, twisted, forced by Steve’s hand but nonfunctional. Teeth and head and all of him hitting a wall, all of his million metal bodies on that ring. He says, “ _Steve_ ,” and lifts his hips encouragingly, and cries out softly when Steve ducks down and kisses his dick through the cloth, tries to suck at it. If this goes on much longer, he might get it up again, and they’re both wiped, they can’t, and he says, “It’s—a no now, Steve. I need to—” and Steve’s pulling away.

Steve’s getting out from between Bucky’s legs and rolling onto his back to lie next to Bucky. He throws one leg over Bucky’s nearest thigh, pinning him. He says, “Thanks for letting me long as I did.”

Bucky manages to get out, “My pleasure.” And he twists everything but his pinned leg to snuggle close to Steve. To tuck his face into the crook of Steve’s neck and kiss him there. He throws his left arm over Steve’s stomach and his right arm stretches out in the dirt above them, curling protectively around the top of Steve’s skull.

Steve murmurs, “Let me get your pants,” and Bucky nods against him. Steve pulls his sweatpants up for him in the back so now he’s modest and respectable. Ready for a board meeting.

“Thanks, sweetheart.”

“My pleasure.” He begins to lazily pet Bucky’s hair, and Bucky hums, contented. “So. You liked the gun, huh?”

Bucky laughs. “Yeah, I fucking. Loved the gun. What d’you think? That was a dream. When I was running and you shot it—Five stars. Except. That better have been a blank.” There’s no trace of gunpowder on his tongue, but who knows; Steve might have wiped the barrel clean. “That _really_ better have been. Steven, if you accidentally hit a deer, or a bird—”

“I didn’t shoot anything.” The petting turns firm. “Calm your horses. See—One sec.” He gets his phone out of his jeans pocket and taps the screen, and there’s the gunshot noise again, up close. Without adrenaline and bubbly childish glee thudding in his ears together, Bucky can recognize it as obviously canned. “Modern technology, Buck.” He kisses the top of Bucky’s head. “It can do the craziest things.”

“Nice that it’s keeping up with you. You crazy fucking asshole.”

“Yeah, ’cause you were perfectly tame. Didn’t egg me on by throwing a knife at my head.”

Bucky stretches his neck to kiss the fading bruise on Steve’s cheek where the knife handle struck. “You’re not a crazy fucking asshole because you chased me through the woods, Steve. You’re a crazy fucking asshole because your costume was a hat and sunglasses. Are you serious?”

“You seemed pretty shocked when I took them off. Don’t try to act like you recognized me. You’re not that clever.”

“Yeah, and when you hold a book up in front of your face, I wonder where you went.” He puts his ear over Steve’s heart, and lets his eyes close. “Pull a coin outta my ear and I’ll clap in astonishment. Pull a coin out of my ass, even.”

“What else?”

“I read the moon landing was faked. Believed that. Gravity’s fake. But the tooth fairy? Not fake, intriguingly enough.”

“The moon landing might have been faked.”

Without opening his eyes, Bucky says, “Please tell me you’re joking.”

He feels Steve shrug. “I haven’t examined the facts enough.”

“Steve!”

“What? We’ve both _been_ at the heart of a bigger conspiracy, all right? What do you want from me?”

“Jesus. Nothing. I mean, I’ve seen you read fucking plenty about—But no, nothing. Everything, actually. You’re fine.”

 

-

 

He grunts. Night sky. Cricketsong. Come drying on his skin. Steve’s hand petting his hair. “Did I—”

“Just for a few minutes. You looked too cute to disturb.”

He smiles and squeezes his eyes shut. Flings his hand over his eyes, then flops it toward where he’s getting pet so they can hold hands. “Shit, we need to find my hoodie. An animal might shit on it.”

“It’s inside already.”

“No it’s not.”

“It is. When you looked away, I picked it back up and threw it onto the pool table.”

“Oh, yeah? In full murderer mode, looking after my clothes?”

“That’s right. I had to lock up anyway, Buck. Some of us aren’t dangerously irresponsible like you. Keeping the window open? Unlocked?” He _tsks_. “I might have to teach you a lesson.”

“Yeah? What’d that be?”

“I dunno. I’ll think of somethin’.

Bucky says, “You make me happy,” and Steve gives his hand a little squeeze.

“Good. That’s the goal.” Then: “You too. You know that, right?” A long silence, and Bucky doesn’t break it to say, _Yeah, I know,_ because it’s the kind of silence Steve sticks in the middle of thoughts, slowing them down because they’re delicate; they need care, and so talking would be interrupting. Eventually, Steve says, “You make things. Brighter. Easier. You always have. You know that.”

“I know that. But. Thanks for saying it.” Because it isn’t a nice thing Steve’s saying about him. It’s about _them_ , and it’s indisputably true. This is a brighter, easier world than it could be for both of them. He knows that. He says, “You know, you still haven’t fucked me in a lake.”

“Oh, you mean ‘innocently played chess with you in a lake.’”

“Exactly. When are we gonna play chess, Steven?”

Steve hums. “I saw a chessboard inside. Along with a coupla other board games.”

“Yeah?” Bucky springs into sitting up. “Was there Clue?”

Steve rolls his eyes and sighs and puts his arms around Bucky to tug him back down, to pillow his head on Steve’s chest. “There _might_ have been Clue.”

“Great. We’re playing clue. Chess too. Let’s make a party of it. Be real decadent.” Suddenly, Steve’s shaking, and Bucky’s concerned until he realizes it’s with laughter, demonic giggling growing louder. “What? What did I say?”

“It’s just— _Clue_.”

“Yeah?”

“A murder mystery?”

Bucky screams a laugh. “Oh, fuck. We’re thematic. Look at us. Chess too, matter of fact. That’s about murder.”

“It’s about war.”

“Well. Yeah.” He draws circles on the back of Steve’s hand with one finger. “Tomorrow, let’s play them? Right now we maybe need to. Uh. The thing where you, uh.”

“Sleep?”

“Bingo. That’s the one. Carry me?”

“No,” but he’s probably gonna. “Carry yourself. Carry me.”

“Sure.” Bucky yawns, and Steve follows suit. “Why don’t I just hire a private jet to come pick us up and take us to the. What. Where are we?”

“About fifteen yards from the porch.”

“Oh. Huh. Well. Carry me piggyback fifteen yards? I’ll be sweet and docile. I’ll carry you next time.”

“Yeah, fine. Come on, spider monkey,” he says, and takes Bucky’s hand.

 

-

 

Bucky wins with Professor Plum, candlestick, kitchen, and he gloats about it until Steve tackles him. Well, not _until_. He gloats for a while after Steve’s tackled him, while they roll around tussling and laughing.

“You, an actual murderer!” he shrieks. “A _real, talented_ murderer who kills and _spins guns around_ and you couldn’t get in the mind of fucking Professor Pl—Ahh!” Steve’s knuckles are harsh against his scalp. “I surrender! I surrender! Fuck! You giant ten-year-old!”

Still noogying him, Steve says, “ _You_ were a giant ten-year-old. I was standard issue.”

“Sure, let’s pretend and say that, why not.” He throws his hands up.“Mercy, mercy, please. Please,” and he pouts.

Steve grants him mercy. Kneeling up over his surrendered body, face pink. “You’re welcome,” he says.

Bucky says, “Mercyder. Murdercy? Which works better?”

“Neither. As puns. As bullet points I can add to my ‘dumb shit Bucky’s said that I can make fun of him for later’ notebook? They’re both perfect.”

Bucky’s whole face relaxes like it just spent two hours getting worked over by a professional masseuse. “That what that flowered diary with the little lock on it is? You know I could pick that easy.”

“You could. You won’t. My security precautions are the honor system.”

“You trust me that much?”

“Seems like I do, yeah. Hard to say why.”

Bucky becomes aware of game pieces poking at his back, trapped between him and the floor, but ignores them to tug Steve down into a kiss and say, “Yeah, you too,” into his mouth, maybe intelligible. Maybe garbled but understood anyway.

**Author's Note:**

> Beginning in the second chapter, this story features a narrative thread in which Steve mails Bucky anonymous threatening notes and embroiders both threats and insults inside his clothing, escalating to pretending a note's been thrown through Bucky's bedroom window, and hiding an implicit death threat in the kitchen. Steve unfalteringly commits to claiming that he is not the person doing these things, but Bucky is fully aware from the beginning that this is a lie, and Steve isn't exactly good at backing up his claim. Eventually, Steve "kidnaps" him in the night and puts him in a large bag, then in a car, driving off with him. Bucky’s enthusiastically happy about every part of this. He is briefly unaware of what’s happening when he’s been woken up by shattering glass (the note through the window scene), and does go on high alert, but Steve appears almost immediately to calm him down. While he's startled by the beginning of the kidnapping scene, he's aware the entire time that it's Steve kidnapping him, and participates happily. There’s no in-text explicit negotiation of the roleplay, but it is implied that Bucky’s expressed interest in this kind of thing in the past, and that Steve is taking his cues from Bucky’s positive responses to each of his actions before escalating further. 
> 
> They later engage in attempted murder roleplay in which Steve plays the part of a complete stranger who has been stalking Bucky (the same person who sent him the notes). This is also not explicitly negotiated, exactly, but something they discuss beforehand using extremely heavy-handed subtext. The actual way this plays out is campy and goofy and basically a melodramatic version of hide and seek, and Bucky has clear ways in which he can call it off mid-scene. However, Steve is explicitly threatening to kill him, has a gun as a prop (and whether it's loaded or not is unclear), and is much more verbally committed to his role than Bucky is to his. He also briefly continues to claim that he's planning to murder Bucky even after he's no longer pretending to be a stranger. While this scene does culminate in sex, it does not become rape roleplay; sex doesn’t enter the picture until the pretense of Steve being a danger to Bucky has been dropped.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Still Life](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12509224) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)
  * [Drooling](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16204154) by [quietnight](https://archiveofourown.org/users/quietnight/pseuds/quietnight)




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